-The Telegraph New Delhi: Activists from across the country have urged the President to stop the submergence of 192 villages in the Narmada Valley in Madhya Pradesh for the Sardar Sarovar dam till the state government compensates and rehabilitates the 40,000 families that will be affected. Some of them met President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday evening under the banner of the National Alliance for People's Movements (NAPM) and submitted a memorandum along...

-Macroscan.org The advance GDP estimates for 2016-17, however calculated, show a grim picture of the economy. The real per capita income of the agriculture-dependent population, which constitutes half the country's populace, has remained stagnant or even marginally declined during the three years of the Modi government. While the pursuit of neoliberal policies can be held responsible for this, treating the aggregate growth as a "great achievement" for political mileage is unwarranted. Please...

-Livemint.com Growing religiosity may boost the tourism sector but may hurt the overall economy Over the past decade, the proportion of religious people has either declined or stagnated in most countries. India seems to have been an exception, according to data from the World Values Survey (WVS), the largest global repository of data on attitudes and beliefs of individuals across the world. More than 90% of Indian respondents said religion was either ‘very...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Heat trapped by tarred roads and dense clusters of buildings may have added nearly 2 degrees to temperatures in the world's most populated cities, including Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai, over and above the effects of global warming, researchers said today. Their study, described as the first to quantify the combined impacts of global warming and the "urban heat island effect", suggests that the overheated cities will face double...

-The Economic Times CHENNAI: The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court has granted an interim stay on the implementation of rules banning the sale and purchase of cattle for slaughter at animal fairs — notified by the central government in May — marking the first judicial pronouncement on an issue that has sparked off heated debate countrywide. The court on Tuesday, in response to a public interest litigation filed by Madurai-based...