-The Times of India AURANGABAD: Over 350 like-minded organizations are set to launch a nation-wide agitation from Monday to protest against the contentious Land Acquisition Bill. Social activist Medha Patkar made the announcement in the city while addressing a gathering of farmers. She said organizations of farmers, traders and fishermen would stage demonstration in different parts of the country and mount pressure on the Union government to stop it from going...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Indian government will study 100,000 infants to evaluate a home-grown vaccine against rotavirus gastroenteritis, released this month amid concerns raised by a paediatrician about the risk of an intestinal side-effect. Doctors from Delhi, Pune and the Christian Medical College, Vellore, will measure -- through what could be India's largest study - any vaccine-associated risk of intussusception, a disorder in which the intestine telescopes into itself and may...

-Frontline If Budget 2015 is any indication, the Modi government is going beyond what could be called benign neglect of agriculture to policy moves that are likely to harm its viability. IT is scarcely surprising that farmers are upset with the Narendra Modi government. Indeed, the rosy dreams created by that famous campaign advertisement of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), when farmers spoke of the high crop prices and better cultivation conditions...

-Business Standard States will now have to spend from their pockets to keep their social-sector schemes going The 2015-16 Budget seems to have broken the contract between the Centre and the states on sharing the economic burden for delivering social security. The Centre's assistance to the states for social sector schemes has come down from a budgeted Rs 3.56 lakh crore in FY15 to Rs 2.20 lakh crore in FY16. Effectively, while the...

-Indiaspend.org   A nationwide survey on youth attitudes reveals mindsets that haven't kept pace with the changing times on issues related to gender and society India is a political democracy, but India's society is not democratic. That has been a hypothesis offered by many social scientists. Now there is empirical proof - from India's hope for the future, its school and college students. * 65 per cent school...