-Business Standard Move comes despite RSS affiliated organisation opposing such regulations Maharashtra government has finalised regulations that will allow it to wrest back control from tribals over the lucrative forest trade in goods such as bamboo and tendu leaves worth thousands of crores annually. This also involves management of potentially 80% of community forestlands in the state after the Union Tribal Affairs ministry’s volte-face on interpreting the Forest Rights Act. The Forest Rights Act...

-Hindustan Times Dehradun: Uttarakhand has not been able to improve its agricultural growth in the past 15 years though the majority of its population and area are still classified as rural and the state government has a record of nearly 100% spending of its budgetary allocations. Hill farming is still awaiting special attention from the government as much of the state’s agriculture budget comes from the Centre and most of the agri-development...

-The Indian Express Giving this information to the media here on Tuesday, D V Sadananda Gowda claimed that transparency “can be achieved even without it”. In a setback to transparency in higher judiciary, the Central government has decided against bringing appointments to the higher judiciary under the RTI Act’s purview. Giving this information to the media here on Tuesday, Union Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda claimed that transparency “can be achieved...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Modi government tries hard to signal a makeover but beyond the symbolic it does not change much. Budget 2016 is not important for the proposals that it has made but for what it tries to signal about the proposed makeover, in a limited way, of the Narendra Modi government. The budget does try hard to claim that the Modi government is not a “suit-boot” administration, an image...

-CaravanMagazine.in Political realities blunt Narendra Modi’s attack on the NREGA At the end of December 2015, the central rural development ministry was in a state of panic. Nine of India’s largest states had declared drought in several districts. The scant kharif harvest meant many farm labourers, who might have been employed on fields, went without work. Water was so scarce that many farms weren’t sowing a winter crop, further diminishing employment...