Central Information Commission (CIC) has come out with a landmark resolution to combat unending assaults on right to information (RTI) activists. According to the resolution, if the commission receives a complaint regarding an assault on or murder of an information-seeker, it will examine pending RTI applications of the victim and order the departments to publish the requested information suo motu on their websites. The resolution was mooted by information commissioner Shailesh...

-The Telegraph   Had it not been for a tub of hot water and a celebrated judge in England in 1949, Bengal’s Singur law may have found itself in legal hot water. Justice I.P. Mukerji, who delivered the Singur judgment, was guided by a 62-year-old English case that dealt with hot water supply by a landlord, according to the order issued on Wednesday. The Calcutta judge used the principle of “purposive interpretation”, which figured...

Are millions of Indians being forced to leave their villages for cities and towns because there aren't enough jobs at home and farm incomes are drying up? Is this "distress migration" unprecedented in India's history? Award-winning journalist P Sainath thinks so. Examining the latest census data, he finds that India's urban population has risen more (91 million more than in the 2001 census) than the rural population (90.6 million more than...

-The Indian Express   M G Chandrappa, a 60-year-old man from the city, has threatened the district administration that he would commit suicide by jumping into a fire. The farmer has written to the DC and the SP to allow him to die the way he wished to if his problems were not solved. The though of committing suicide occured to him after being cheated and abandoned by his sons. Chandrappa was a...

Agriculture specialists convening in Bern to debate the question of how to feed the world have agreed on one thing: a new paradigm is needed. Farming models are breaking down – as witnessed by the suicide of a farmer every half hour in India - and new directions for research in agriculture for development are needed to support the sector and combat global poverty. A joint conference hosted by non-government organisation Swissaid...