-National Alliance of People’s Movements A historic mobilization of more than 1 lakh farmers, farm workers and agrarian masses belonging to a wide variety of social movements from across India descended upon New Delhi today. Protestors at the 'Kisan Khet Mazdoor Mahapanchayat'  came to show their collective commitment towards getting the government’s attention to reverse the grave agrarian crisis caused by liberalization reforms supporting foreign investors, corporations; reforms that support elite...

-Live Mint The Street Vendors Bill, 2012, is the first attempt to regulate urban street hawkers India’s more than 10 million street vendors should be registered on the basis of their Aadhaar numbers to ensure proper identification, a standing committee has recommended in its report on the Street Vendors Bill, 2012. “The Aadhaar card may be linked towards identification of street vendors,” the panel said in the report it submitted to the Lok...

-Live Mint Attempt to broad-base direct benefits transfer plan may help shore up the Congress’s standing among rural population The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government plans to include its flagship rural job guarantee programme in the second phase of its ambitious direct benefits transfer (DBT) plan, under which beneficiaries of social welfare programmes will receive money directly in their Aadhaar-linked bank accounts. The attempt to broad-base the cash transfer plan before several...

-The Economic Times Almost every fortnight, Nandan Nilekani knocks on the doors of the Reserve Bank to push his case for making Aadhaar an easy gateway to a bank account. He has reached a frontier that, when crossed, could multiply the number of Indians, untouched by high-street banks, to have accounts. An inexpensive technology to execute this exists: the fingerprint of the person with a 12-digit individual identification number is all a...

-The Indian Express Kannur: Seven years after Bitihotra Mohanti alias Bitti jumped parole following conviction in the rape of a German national in Rajasthan, he was arrested from Kannur in Kerala on Friday night, bringing to an end one of the longest hunts for a fugitive in the country. The son of former Orissa DGP B B Mohanti, Bitti had been sentenced to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment by a fast-track court for...