-The Hindu As many as 20 platoons of armed policemen stood guard as land acquisition for Posco’s proposed steel plant project resumed at the break of dawn on Sunday, with the demolition of betel vineyards in and around Gobindpur village in this coastal gram panchayat of Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district. The administration was trying to acquire 700 acres for the project, in addition to the 2,000 acres already acquired, by demolishing around 400...

-Outlook Caste has nothing to do with graft. Even so, Nandy must be heard. Forging a link, however tenuous, between caste and corruption is akin to saying  that the average Indian male  has sex on his mind, caste and communalism in his heart and indigestion in his tummy. That was an irreverent response to the sweeping statement made by the “ageing enfant terrible” of Indian sociology, Ashis Nandy, during a discussion...

-Live Mint Parliamentary committee’s proposals on the food security Bill are an improvement over the original The standing committee of Parliament, set up to examine the National Food Security Bill (NFSB), has finally given its recommendations. With this, the Bill has moved one step closer to seeing daylight. The recommendations, which are not binding on the government, will now be considered by the Union cabinet before being put to vote in Parliament.   The...

-IANS Minister of State for human resource development Shashi Tharoor Friday said the right to education (RTE) does not apply to nursery admissions. "The RTE doesn't apply to nursery admissions as the law specifies eight years of compulsory schooling from the age of six to 14. Nursery children are younger than that," Tharoor said at a programme organised by television channel Headlines Today. "As a social mechanism, a school's admission policy...

-The Indian Express The deafening silence from official circles on the Verma committee recommendations is in sharp contrast to the widespread well-deserved appreciation that the committee has received. It is common for governments to form such committees to buy time and take the heat off themselves. Perhaps that was the government’s intention when it set up the committee at the height of the protests in the wake of the brutal gangrape...