-The Hindu “Most of prisoners in Maharashtra jails victims of prejudice” A report on Muslim prisoners in Maharashtra jails by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) establishes that most of them do not have connections with criminal gangs, and points to an acute bias of the police for arresting them in some cases only because they belong to a particular community. A Study of the Socio Economic Profile and Rehabilitation Needs of...

-The Hindu Lack of irrigation found to be one of the major causes of farmer suicides Lack of irrigation is one of the major causes leading to cotton farmer suicides in Maharashtra, a new study by the Council of Social Development (CSD) has stated. Titled ‘Socio-economic impact assessment of Bt cotton in India,’ the study has yet again raised the question of whether the marginal land of Vidarbha is suited for Bt...

-The Times of India UPA's flagship rural guarantee scheme is performing fitfully in terms of work days, wages and coverage, amply confirming rural development minister Jairam Ramesh's fears that the programme has become a scheme for digging ditches. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, UPA's outreach to the poor, is not meeting critical parameters and is crying out for reform with questions about the utility a Rs 36,000-crore a year budget...

-PTI Reflecting the concerns of India, the Rio+20 summit has said that developing countries needed additional resources for sustainable development and that unwarranted conditionalities on Official Development Assistance (ODA) and finance should be avoided. “We reaffirm that developing countries need additional resources for sustainable development,” said the 55-page declaration adopted at the end of the Rio+20 summit officially called “United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development”. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his address at...

-The Guardian 'Pathway for a sustainable future' declared, but Greenpeace says summit was failure of epic proportions Amid doubt, disappointment and division, the world's governments came together in Rio on Friday to declare "a pathway for a sustainable century". At the close of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, heads of state and ministers from more than 190 nations signed off on a plan to set global sustainable development goals and other measures to...