-TheWire.in Swaraj Abhiyan founder Prashant Bhushan discusses the Essar tapes and other scams, the role of whistleblowers and his fallout with Arvind Kejriwal. Celebrated lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan has just notched up another victory with the Supreme Court-appointed panel decreeing there was prima facie evidence that former CBI director Ranjit Sinha had attempted to influence the investigation into the coal block allocation scam under the then UPA government. The court’s observation was based...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The gender gap in healthcare spending is increasing in India, and even educated and wealthy households spend less on women's health than on men's, scientists have reported. Demographers and other experts have documented for over a century how Indians discriminate against girls in healthcare and general well-being. New research now suggests that this gender disparity is amplified in adults and has increased over time. An analysis from two nationwide...

-IndiaSpend.com Data demonstrate that discrimination against the SCs and STs in education, employment and property ownership continues despite affirmative action policies. Earlier this week, when upper-caste villagers in the western UP district of Firozabad tried to prevent the funeral of a Dalit paramilitary soldier killed in a terrorist ambush, it was the latest manifestation of widespread discrimination against the 305 million Indians belonging to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Upper-caste villagers refused to...

-The Hindu Confining it to just the Ministry of Rural Development would be the most retrograde step in democratic decentralisation in over a quarter century. If, as The Hindu’s exclusive on Wednesday indicates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi were to close down the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, it would confirm one’s worst fears about his government’s hypocritical approach to grass-roots democracy for grass-roots development. This was a lacuna that was evident in the ‘Gujarat...

-The Times of India New Delhi: Veteran journalist P Sainath has made a strong demand for declaring agriculture a public service. He also believes there needs to be a special session of Parliament to discuss the farmer crisis and the decade-old report of National Commission of Farmers chaired by professor M S Swaminathan. The author of Everybody Loves A Good Drought delivered the inaugural lecture of a monthly lecture series planned by...