-Economic and Political Weekly India's scheduled tribes are among the most deprived socio-economic groups and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has great potential in tribal areas. While the Andhra Pradesh government has made an effort to ensure implementation of the scheme in the scheduled areas, the gap between administrative orders and the grass-roots level is wide. This article lists measures that could radically improve implementation of the scheme...

-The Indian Express Although the prevalence of sexual violence in India is the lowest in the world (8.5 per cent in 2013), it affects 27.5 million women in the country. Rapes reported to the police as sexual violence surged from 39 per day to 93 per day in 2013. In Uttar Pradesh alone, five rapes occurred in 36 hours. Even these are underestimations, for two reasons. One is the exclusion of...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The High-Level Committee set up by the Narendra Modi government to review the major laws relating to environment protection has, in its recommendations, worked towards two sets of objectives: one, to separate business from the messiness of governance, and, two, to redraw the line of demarcation between the judiciary and the executive. Manju Menon (manjumenon@namati.org) and Kanchi Kohli (kanchikohli@namati.org) are with the Centre for Policy Research - Namati...

-The Times of India PATNA: Even as Bihar is endowed with substantial groundwater resources, a vast section of its population has no easy access to potable water. The government claims to have sunk more than 10 lakh shallow and 2000 deep tubewells in different parts of the state, but they fail to cope up with the ever-increasing demand of the people for domestic and irrigational needs. Experts feel that assured availability of...

-The Hindu The clean-up of the plant is pending due to legal disputes Thirty years after India's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, contamination owing to the leakage of poisonous gas from the Union Carbide pesticide factory continues to affect residents. The leak of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate on the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984, killed thousands of people in its immediate aftermath and continued to kill people in the...