-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: Even as a Joint Parliamentary Panel is looking into the controversial Land Bill, which seeks to replace the Land Act of 2013, the National Democratic Alliance is considering diluting the controversial consent clause and offering more clarity on compensation to farmers to make the piece of legislation more acceptable. A highly-placed source told BusinessLine that “an important element of the strategy is to get the report...

-Hindustan Times While searching for updates on the United Nations Third International Conference on Financing for Development, which took place in Addis Ababa recently, I came across an interesting piece of news: Music maestro AR Rahman and Bollywood superstar Hrithik Roshan would join a seven-day global campaign to popularise the sustainable Development goals (SDGs), which are a new set of universal goals, targets and indicators that 193 UN member states will...

-Economic and Political Weekly A survey to identify who the poor are and how many are actually poor is necessary if programmes and benefits targeted at the needy are to reach them. The Socio Economic Caste Census, of which partial results have been published, was intended to do this. Yet, even a cursory look at the figures indicates that they call for a willing suspension of disbelief. N C Saxena (naresh.saxena@gmail.com) was...

-PTI If a website is noticed with barriers for the visually impaired browsers, it would be upgraded with necessary tools In a major initiative, people with disabilities will be able to easily access government websites across the country as steps are being taken to enhance their features. As many as 6,000 websites of the Centre and state governments would be covered out of which 50 per cent would be made fully accessible for...

-The Indian Express Planting fruit-bearing trees specific to the region can aid revenue generation The road ministry has finalised a “green highways” policy to “tree-line” 140,000 kilometres of national highways. Under this policy, one per cent of the civil cost of national highway Development projects will have to be set aside for the planting of trees in a planned manner, covering both existing NH sections and new routes that would be added...