-Scroll.in FIRst it refused to make consent of forest dwellers mandatory for growing plantations on their lands, now it breaks the promise of even consulting them. The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has drafted new rules that dilute the rights of Adivasis and other forest dwellers to independently decide how their traditional forestlands are used. The new rules, formulated in February, give the forest bureaucracy across the country the power...

-Livemint.com The govt will count jobs created in establishments deploying less than 10 people, which essentially means that shops run by one owner and one employee too will be counted as employment generation New Delhi: Expanding the scope of job creation in the country, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has now decided to start counting jobs created in the non-farm informal sector. The government has asked labour bureau under the Union labour...

-News18.com When over 50,000 farmers in Maharashtra marched towards Mumbai with similar demands on Sunday, they followed Vijoo Krishnan, a man hailing from a small hamlet in Kerala's Kannur, which has turned out to be a great source of inspiration to the millions of Communists in the state. On December 20, 1946, in Karivelloor, a small village in the northern part of Kerala — then called Malabar, which was a part of...

-The Indian Express It is morally obtuse and analytically misleading to see farmers’ long march as a demand for handouts The “long march of the farmers” in Maharashtra refocused attention on the crisis in certain regions in Indian agriculture. It should be the headline news that jolts the nation out of a complacent stupor. The protest made a series of long-standing but familiar demands: Loan waivers, increase in MSP, implementation of Forest...

-TheWire.in When conscientious and well-meaning citizens are attacked for "acting rightly", is the government "acting rightly" by not doing enough to safeguard them? Yet another Right to Information (RTI) activist in Gujarat has paid with his life for demanding transparency. On March 9, Nanjibhai Sondarva (35), a resident of Manekvada village in Kotda Sangani taluka of Rajkot district, was allegedly clubbed to death by six people. The deceased’s father has claimed that...