-The Telegraph Lessons to take away from the two recent calamities in NorthEast It is never easy to rationalise tragedy. The two witnessed recently in the Northeast are no exceptions. One, the Assam floods in which the state’s two major rivers, the Brahmaputra and the Barak, and their tributaries wreaked havoc, killing nearly 200 people and, at one point, putting close to 4.5 million people in danger of starvation and disease. Two,...

-Down to Earth Police stop farmers from using tube wells to irrigate their fields   India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, appears headed for a drought. Seventy-two of its 75 districts (96 per cent) recorded ‘below normal’ rainfall till July 20, 2022, according to India Meteorological Department (IMD) data. Fifty-nine of the 75 districts recorded ‘extremely low’ rainfall. These districts are suffering a ‘large deficit’, which means they received less than 60 per cent...

-Article-14.com The arrests and continued incarceration of fact-checker Mohammad Zubair, political activist Javed Mohammed and the exoneration of 121 Adivasis accused of terrorism are the latest evidence of how the State adopts extra legal methods of dealing with ‘inconvenient citizens’—including journalists, dissidents, activists or the poorest Indians—to push official narratives of conspiracy and terrorism. The common threads: manipulation or egregious misinterpretation of laws, changing accusations, unknown or untraceable complainants and the...

-The Telegraph The Telegraph reports on a riverine community’s determination to save its environs Once upon a time, when my forefathers were looking for land to settle down, they found this barren sandbar and decided to make it a habitable place,” says Nani Roy, 42, a resident of Manachar. Char is the Bengali word for sandbar. Manachar is the sandbar that extends from Durgapur Barrage to Panagarh in Burdwan district. About three...

-Hindustan Times The accused were booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for allegedly assisting Maoists in the 2017 Burkapal attack, which killed 25 CRPF personnel. A court in Chhattisgarh on Friday acquitted 121 tribals booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for allegedly assisting Maoists in 2017 Burkapal attack, citing lack of evidence against them. A designated National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Dantewada pronounced the acquittal order on Friday...