-Hindustan Times Many face backlash and are boycotted from their communities for marrying outside their caste. With the social boycott bill, that came into effect last July, there is hope for the victims. Pune: On a cloudy Thursday morning in January, 1990, in Pune’s Cantt area, Umesh and Manju walked out of their homes separately — anxious and excited. After a month of waiting, the court had given them a date...

-The Telegraph Calcutta: Calcutta High Court on Thursday stalled the panchayat election process and asked the state election commission to explain by Monday what it had done about the complaints of prospective Opposition candidates being prevented from filing nomination. "Till the court passes any further order on this issue, the state election commission is directed to stall the election process," Justice Subrata Talukdar said in an interim order on a BJP petition. This...

-The Hindu Amid criticism from SC/ST panel, experts say project must continue Now in her late twenties, Veeramma Selvan of Thekkekadampara tribal hamlet in Sholayur gram panchayat of Attappady has reasons to believe that her gods have stopped smiling. It was in January last year that she lost her five-month-old, underweight son Balu — her fourth child — allegedly due to milk aspiration. (a medical condition in which the mother's milk goes...

-The Times of India Thiruvananthapuram: The efforts of district NREGA cell to recreate assets to deal with possible drought situation have produced good results in some of the rural panchayats in the district.   Construction of farm ponds which was extensively carried out under employment guarantee scheme has gifted the district with over 2,000 farm ponds in areas where agriculture is the predominant occupation. The move also triggered a shift from the usual...

-Newsclick.in Families continue being denied ration and social security pension, due to lack of Aadhaar or failure of biometric authentication. People from 14 states testified to the rampant violations of the Right to Food at a national public hearing on 15 March organised by the Right to Food Campaign at the Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi. The testimonies spoke of the denials of entitlements — to food, social security pensions and even work...