-The Hindu In Bihar, ‘development’ comes laced with caste. For the upper castes, it is Modi’s pitch on investment that matters while for Backward Classes, Nitish’s social welfare agenda makes him a governance icon. The BJP, having no regional match for Nitish, has banked on Modi’s popularity. “Development” is a word that one encounters frequently across poll-bound Bihar, with people across caste lines using it to explain their political preferences. However, this...

-The Hindu In returning their awards, Nayantara Sahgal and Ashok Vajpeyi have reminded Modi of two duties he has neglected — that of upholding a citizen's right to life and of protecting an artist’s right to creativity. Their angst is also directed at the silence of fellow writers and literary institutions.A writer not only seeks to reform a particular injustice in society. She is a tuning fork, a warning signal about...

-The Hindu If Maharashtra is trying to identify children who are not getting educated, as per RTE, it has to include those children who are not studying the core subjects, be they in a madrasa, Vedic pathshala or any other religious or community school Maharashtra’s recent decision to conduct a survey of what it calls “non-school going children” seems to have created a storm. Political parties are now up in arms calling...

-The Indian Express The debate over the land acquisition bill is increasingly marked by political tone deafness and legislative hubris. The government has offered minor amendments. But most of them are designed to display its consistent ability to be too clever by half rather than its ability to address deep issues. The 2013 bill had been framed in the context of several issues. The now much-maligned Land Acquisition Act of 1894...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Mangal Singh's three sons were forced to work as daily wage labourers in Gujarat, hundreds of kilometres from their village in Rajasthan's Ajmer district, before the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was introduced. They were employed there for perilous digging of wells and stayed away from their home for months leaving their 82-year-old father to fend for himself. The NREGA came as a big boon for...