-Business Standard As many as 47 sedition cases were reported in 2014 across nine states, according to the National Crime Records Bureau The 156-year-old colonial-era sedition law, used against arrested Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the students' union, Jawaharlal Nehru University, has been discarded by the UK (where punishment once included chopping ears), South Korea and Indonesia. Kumar was sent to judicial custody for 14 days, amid violence within and outside a Delhi court...

-The Hindu Business Line Ten years on, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act endures because it provides the poor a political voice February 2016 marks a decade since India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) came into force. NREGA is both revolutionary and modest; it promises every rural household one hundred days of employment annually on public-works projects, but the labour is taxing and pays minimum wage, at best. Many charges have...

-The Hindu The scheme also shuts out ‘innocent’ taxpayers who filed returns on time but whose cases were chosen for scrutiny to verify claims. Tax payers, whose returns were picked for random scrutiny by the authorities in recent years, would not be eligible to turn concealed income into ‘white’ under the Income Declaration Scheme (IDS), announced in the Union Budget to bring black money into the tax net. Experts believe this may...

-Report by Delhi Solidarity Group The Government of India presented its annual budget with much fanfare, claiming it to be propoor and pro-rural, but the question looms whether it will really change the lives of the marginalized sections of the society. For a country like India that claims to be ‘democratic, socialist, sovereign, republic’ working towards the ‘welfare’ of its citizens it might be assumed that the key areas on priority...

-Hindustan Times Preparations for the three-day Art of Living event on the banks of Yamuna have reportedly forced birds to migrate from the area. New Delhi: As the site has been cleared of all bushes and vegetation, species such as larks, pipits, warblers and other rare birds found in this zone are rapidly disappearing because of the destruction of the riverine habitat. The World Culture Festival (WCF) being organised by the Art of...