-Frontline Reinstatement of the fundamental right to property in the Constitution will on its own do little to protect the interests of poor peasants and traditional communities.  The Indian Constitution adopted in 1950 guaranteed a set of fundamental rights that cannot be abridged by Central or State laws. One of these fundamental rights was the right to property enshrined in Articles 19(1)(f) and 31. Article 19(1)(f) guaranteed to all citizens the right...

-The Economic Times Where will India get its water from in the coming years? The water challenge is already grave and could get graver. By 2050, for instance, it is estimated that demand would go up to 1,180 million cubic metres, 1.65 times the current levels, a situation that would be made worse by fast dwindling fresh water resources. That's why desalination — removing salt from seawater to make fresh water —...

-The Telegraph New Delhi/Ranchi, Sept. 20: Land reforms and revenue minister Mathura Prasad Mahto today accused Bihar government of not handing over 82,000 land maps of 32,615 villages in Jharkhand even though the new state was carved out in 2000. At the state revenue ministers’ conference titled Modernisation of Land Records, Mahto, in the presence of Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh, said Jharkhand had taken up the issue with Bihar...

-The Hindustan Times The recent regularisation of around 900 colonies in Delhi is an inevitable and welcome move. No city can allow a majority of its residents to live in conditions of illegality, particularly when that illegality is a direct outcome of its own history of urban planning. However, why are moves to regularise unauthorised colonies not being followed by similar moves to regularise bastis (often reductively called 'slums') that house...

-The Indian Express A group of teachers at Jamia Milia Islamia University has put together a compilation of terror cases that failed to hold up in court, all of these built by the Delhi Police Special Cell around youths they had arrested and described as terrorists. Titled “Framed, Damned and Acquitted: Dossiers of a Very Special Cell” and compiled from court judgments and media reports, the study by the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity...