-The Hindu   A helpline in Odisha is empowering students to act as watchdogs to monitor implementation of the RTE Act, which completes three years in April "My teacher does not come to school," speaks a little voice on one end of the phone line. At the other end, a woman responds reassuringly, asking for the child's details - name of the school, the district. Within a matter of days, the ‘teacher' is...

-The Hindu   The water markets of Marathwada are booming. In the town of Jalna alone, tanker owners transact between Rs.6 million and Rs.7.5 million in water sales each day Thirst is Marathwada's greatest crop this season. Forget sugarcane. Thirst, human and industrial, eclipses anything else. Those harvesting it reap tens of millions of rupees each day across the region. The van loads of dried-out cane you see on the roads could end...

-The Hindu     The circumstances surrounding the custodial death of a Dalit woman in Tamil Nadu in 2002 serve as a reminder of the difficulties in securing justice when the offenders are government functionaries This is a case of justice being awarded after a decade. Last month, the Ramanathapuram Sessions Court sentenced eight policemen to rigorous imprisonment, for up to 10 years, for the 2002 custodial killing of Karuppi, a poor Dalit woman,...

-The Hindu Though they are Scheduled Tribes (STs) in northern Andhra Pradesh, just across the Sileru river in southern Odisha, the Konda Reddi community is not recognised as tribal. Warning that Maoists are taking advantage of their grievances, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has recommended that their claims - which he feels are genuine - be examined soon. In a letter to Union Tribal Affairs Minister V. Kishore Chandra Deo on Monday,...

-The Indian Express Kolkata: West Bengal's notification for the panchayat elections marks a flash point in an ongoing tussle between the Mamata Banerjee government and the state election commission. The government notification, issued last week independently of the election authorities, has declared polls in two phases, on April 26 and 30. The election commission, headed by Meera Pandey, has been insisting on three phases. On Monday, the commission wrote to the government...