-Outlook The faecal matter hits the rotary blades, politically-but we're still staring at a sanitation disaster "Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate mostly besides the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover." -V.S. Naipaul An Area of Darkness, 1964 Not...

-The Hindu While the focus is on pilgrims, nobody is talking about the fate of boys and men who came from their villages in the Mandakini valley to earn during the yatri season It is one week since Uttarakhand's worst disaster in living memory. Flash floods resulting from extremely intense rainfall swept away mountainsides, villages and towns, thousands of people, animals, agricultural fields, irrigation canals, domestic water sources, dams, roads, bridges, and...

-The Hindu At the foothills of Datla mountain of Satpuda Valley in the Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh is located the picturesque village of Dhadaw. Located on the banks of Dudhi River that also defines the boundary of the district, Dhadaw falls in the district's forest belt. Within the periphery of this village lies a world that has efficiently maintained the essence of traditional agricultural practices - a remarkable feat at...

-The Business Standard Despite a marked improvement in the southwest monsoon, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on Wednesday said production of coarse cereals, pulses, oilseeds and rice, to some extent, would be less than last year. For sugar, the cane area is more. But, Pawar said, some drop in production can be expected as farmers in Karnataka and Maharashtra have diverted a sizeable portion of standing crop towards fodder. Announcing the second relief package...

-The Hindu Public Interest Litigation is a good thing when it is used to enforce the rights of the disadvantaged. But it has now been diluted to interfere with the power of the government to take decisions on a range of policy matters Judicial activism is not an easy concept to define. It means different things to different persons. Critics denounce judicial decisions as activist when they do not agree with them....