-The Hindu Laws count for nothing when some of the worst offenders are government-run bodies, agencies and enterprises. The Central government is trying to push through the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012, under pressure from the Supreme Court; but, going by the experience of the past few decades, there is no cause to assume the dehumanising practice of manual removal of human excreta will soon...

-The Times of India The government may be standing firm against scrapping coal block allotments to private companies but a high-level official panel for monitoring progress in these mines is pitching for largescale de-allocation to "defuse the current crisis" over Coalgate. "Out of the 90 coal blocks allocated to private players since 1993, 60 coal blocks with 6.7 billion tonnes (estimated reserves) valued at nearly Rs 2 lakh crore can be cancelled...

-The Hoot Buried in a parliamentary committee report is a refutation by villagers of TOI’s controversial stories on BT cotton’s virtues, published in 2008 and reprinted in the paper as paid news in 2011. PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA revisits the saga  Allegations leveled by Palagummi Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu newspaper that its competing daily, the Times of India, published an article at the behest of Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech without disclosing this...

-Outlook Partha S. Bhattacharya, who was the chairman and managing director of Coal India Ltd (CIL) between 2006 and 2011, is credited with turning around the PSU. He spoke to Arindam Mukherjee on the heat and dust generated by the CAG report on allocation of coal blocks to private players. Excerpts: * Should the government allow the private sector into coal mining? There is plenty of coal for everyone. We are, at the...

-The Financial Express As the Centre braces for an expanded distribution of grain among the poor under the national food security law, here’s a sobering thought. According to the latest official data, various state governments have failed to utilise even the grain allocated under the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS). During the last three fiscal years, states have not been able to take the full delivery of grain — mostly rice and...