-Press Release by National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) New Delhi: Calling this year’s union budget ‘just an exercise in manipulation of numbers,’ veteran activist Medha Patkar asked, “When the major decisions like the demonetisation and GST are taken between two budgets then what’s the relevance of the Budget?,” at a panel discussion on the analysis of this year’s union budget with a special focus on Handloom, Fisheries, Dalits, Adivasis, Forest,...

-Hindustan Times Gyan Chandra, 45, of Bhauri village in Sitapur had taken a loan of Rs 5 lakh from a finance firm in 2015 to purchase a tractor. Loan recovery agents allegedly crushed a Dalit farmer under a tractor in Sitapur on Saturday when he failed to deposit an arrear of the loan he had taken from a finance company, police quoted the victim’s brother as saying. Assistant superintendent of police (ASP), Sitapur,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A sub-committee of the highest advisory body on education has recommended including a provision for punishing parents if they don't send their wards to schools. A draft report placed before a meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education (Cabe) on Monday said the Right to Education Act needed to be looked into afresh. "The provisions of the RTE Act 2009 need to be re-looked as there is no...

-The Indian Express In June this year, The Indian Express had highlighted how farmers were selling potatoes for 20 paise a kilo at the Pipli grain market in Kurukshetra district. Chandigarh: Moving to address farm distress, the Haryana government is set to announce Saturday the Bhavantar Bharpai scheme which, on the lines of minimum support price (MSP), will offer “input cost” for four crops — potato, onion, cabbage and tomato —...

-The Indian Express Low crime rate numbers often don’t mean citizens are safer, and ‘rape capital’ and ‘crime capital’ could both be unfair assessments. In reports such as the one published by the National Crime Records Bureau last week, the quality of data is important, as is its placement in the right context. New Delhi: “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts...