-The Business Standard Varad Pande, officer on special duty, ministry of rural development, says the Aadhaar identification project aims to cover at least half of country’s population by next year. He talks about where it has reached, in an interview with Samie Modak & Abhineet Kumar. Edited excerpts: * What is the Aadhaar project’s status? The project started about two years earlier and now has a little more than 270 million enrolled, roughly...

-The Guardian Communities have more hope than ever of seeing off companies trying to acquire their land, with support from media and NGOs A new report on land acquisition by the Munden Project/Rights and Resources Initiative brings an important angle to the land "grab" debate. Rather than focusing on the ethics of land grabbing, the report makes the business case for working with local communities, arguing that failure to inform or fairly...

-The Hindu In the recent incidents at Dhule and Thangadh, the communal bias of the police was caught on camera and is there for anyone who cares to see Images of the Delhi police lobbing tear gas shells at and using water canons on protesters at India Gate on a Sunday, December 23, 2012, who were agitating against the gang rape of a young girl are embedded in the nation’s psyche, courtesy...

-The Business Standard Implement it with watershed development schemes to alleviate poverty The United Progressive Alliance government appears to be upbeat regarding the prospects of its flagship scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which provides a universal, self-targeting guarantee of 100 days of employment to every household in all rural districts of India. “MGNREGA has tremendous potential to increase agricultural production, which we have not been able to...

-The Hindu Alleged involvement of Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien KOTTAYAM: The victim in the Suryanelli sex-scandal case and those close to her are considering taking legal recourse seeking further investigation into the alleged involvement of Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien in the case. Those close to the victim say they have two options before them, one being to approach the court at Munnar, where the original case was registered, invoking...