-Kafila.org This fact-finding exercise was coordinated by the CENTRE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS. Team members were the human rights activist and former civil servant Harsh Mander; former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E N Rammohan; Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University; National Integration Council member John Dayal; senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and CPA Director and senior editor Seema Mustafa. Introduction and Overview The first impression of the Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) was supposed to be a game-changer ahead of the 2014 general elections, with the government planning to plug leakages by transferring cash directly into the accounts of beneficiaries and hoping to cash in on their goodwill. But eight months down the line, it is discovering that the grand plan has run into bureaucratic walls and the beneficiaries are not ready to...

-The Hindu Biomass cookstoves and solar lighting improve the health of women and are creating business models that empower them Around the world three billion people have no access to modern cooking fuels. They depend mostly on direct burning of solid biomass for cooking and heating. The smoke from these rudimentary stoves causes some four million deaths annually, destroys millions of tonnes of crops and leads to global warming and large-scale regional...

-The Hindu Efficacy of System of Rice Intensification demonstrated in Tiruchi district TIRUCHI: In a region that has been famous for generous use of the Cauvery water [whenever available], farmers are increasingly adopting a cultivation method that requires less water. A large number of farmers in the Tiruchi district who went in for ‘kuruvai' paddy crop in the filter point areas in June amidst concerns over the dwindling water table had successfully adopted...

-The Hindu The Left parties have always maintained that the financial statements and accounts of a political party should be made publicly available, and hence strongly rejected the order of the Central Information Commission (CIC) that sought to bring six national parties under the purview of the Right to Information Act, 2005. Disputing the CIC's argument that parties were public authorities, Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist),...