-The Indian Express He added that the amendment means that companies are not required now to show the names of Political Parties they have contributed to. Chandigarh: Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi on Saturday said that amendments to the Companies Act of 2013, removing cap on corporate contribution to Political Parties, are “basically hitting” transparency in funding. “Two things are likely to happen in future. There would be less and less...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-TheWire.in Statistical analysis suggests that farmers in states that have amended the Agricultural Produce Market Committee Act are less likely to commit suicide, but further reforms are needed to reduce the incidence of farmer suicides across the country. Every summer, it is the same old story: drought and farmers committing suicide in India. Between 2012 and 2015, over 10,000 farmers killed themselves. Farmer suicides are a major cause of political contention, despite...

-Scroll.in Suranga is a horizontal tunnel-like well excavated in a hillside. Even as Kerala reels under severe drought, Gangadhar Rao never misses a day to irrigate thousands of areca nut trees, coconut trees and pepper plants on his 30 acres of farmland. Rao is a farmer from Bedadka Panchayath in Kerala’s northernmost district of Kasaragod and depends on Suranga for all his water needs — irrigation and domestic — round the year. Suranga is...

-The Hindu Business Line These bearer instruments can’t make political funding transparent; they don’t address the insidious corporate-politico nexus The Government is all set to introduce a scheme offering political bonds as bearer instruments which will conceal the identity of the bond buyers and enable a process of political donations that, it argues, will make funding Political Parties transparent. The argument is deeply flawed. Electoral bonds as envisaged here open up yet another...