-Countercurrents.org   The events of last over two decades have shown us, more than before that the efforts of dividing the nation by communal forces have been a major obstacle to social peace and process of development. In India while the communal violence began with the Jabalpur riot of 1961, it is from last couple of decades especially from 1980s that the divisive politics has tried to drive a wedge between different...

-The Hindu   A concern about the Food Security Bill is that legal entitlement has been weakened to mean a passive right to receive whatever the state gives The hallmark of the National Food Security Bill 2011 is that if implemented it will translate into India's first ever right to food legislation, guaranteeing food as a justiciable, legal entitlement to its people. However, in its current form, the Bill fails to evolve a...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court on Monday said there is no basis to the fear that the radioactive effects of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant, when commissioned, will be far reaching. A Bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra said: "We are convinced that the KKNPP design incorporates advanced safety features complying with the current standards of redundancy, reliability, independence and prevention of common cause failures in its safety systems....

-The Hindu     As the borewells go deeper in Maharashtra, there have been worrying instances of ‘paleo-historic storages' being breached "Only two of them work," says Badri Kharat of his borewells in Roshangaon. That's hard - when you've sunk 36 of them spending millions of rupees, as he has. Kharat, a big landowner and local political personage, has been generous to his neighbours in this village of Jalna district. He pipes in drinking...

-The Business Standard Politics means sugarcane gets Maharashtra's scarce water The drought in a large part of Maharashtra, said to be the worst since 1972, may have been triggered by poor rainfall in the last monsoon season - but it has been compounded by mismanagement of the available water. Nearly one-third of the state's population living in the 15 drought-hit districts in and around the Marathwada region is facing a severe scarcity...