-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: It had been expected to dilute the UPA government's showpiece Right to Information (RTI) Act that had become a scourge of sorts for its ministers and bureaucrats and was even blamed by some as a contributing factor for the policy paralysis during its reign. But the Narendra Modi-led BJP government has done the reverse and taken RTI to quite another level. Starting next month, all replies...

-Deccan Herald In accordance with a new agroecology initiative within the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, by using the agroecological methods, small farmers are key to feeding the world, Nafeez Ahmed notes. Modern industrial agricultural methods can no longer feed the world, due to the impacts of overlapping environmental and ecological crises linked to land, water and resource availability. The stark warning comes from the new United Nations Special Rapporteur on the...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Tribal Affairs Centre has launched Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana (VKY) for welfare of Tribals. Launching the scheme on the occasion of the meeting of the Tribal Welfare Ministers of States/UTs here today the Union Tribal Welfare Minister Shri Jual Oram said that the scheme been launched on pilot basis in one block each of the States of AP, MP, HP, Telangana, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and...

-The Business Standard Scheme faces pincer attack with a proposed higher proportion of expenditure on material, reducing the budget available to pay wages The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) faces a pincer attack under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, with parallel moves promising to shrink and mutate the nature of the scheme. Two of the moves have been revealed - a proposed higher proportion of expenditure on material,...

-The Indian Express The central empowered committee of the Supreme Court has asked the Rajasthan government to immediately stop mining activities allowed around Sariska in "blatant violation" of the court's orders and name the officers responsible so that "appropriate action" can be taken against them. The decision to allow mining activities within one kilometre of the Sariska tiger reserve and Jamua Ramgarh sanctuary was taken at a meeting chaired by then acting...