-TheWire.in Community managed rice banks have replaced defunct government managed rice banks in several areas of Patna district in Bihar. A few years ago, Parbhawati Devi, Bichiya Devi and Meena Devi were landless farm laborers, fully at the mercy of landed farmers for their survival. But things have changed since then. Today, hundreds of women in dozens of villages in Patna district of Bihar, mostly from the marginalised Mahadalit community, have turned...

-Scroll.in Both children and their parents need the unique identity number to get admission, receive benefits under the education law. Along the Sagarpur nala (drain) near Uttam Nagar in West Delhi lives a community of grinding stone makers originally from Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh. They say they have lived in the row of shacks along the stormwater drain for over a decade now. But they have no documents to prove this. “No power...

-JantaKaReporter.com Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has often been dubbed by his criticis as a Twitter minister because of his prolific use of the microblogging site to resolve minor inconveniences of passengers. However, on major fronts, his department has made no progress at all. In some cases, the performance of Indian trains have alarmingly worsened under Suresh Prabhu as the minister. The number of accidents has risen with total losses of lives also...

-Livemint.com Mint’s rural distress index is below its median value, but it conceals varying distress levels across states Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s announcement of farm loan waiver has given credence to similar demands from across the country. Those making these demands include political parties, protesting farmers and even the judiciary. An earlier Plainfacts column had pointed out how farm loan waivers can be counter-productive in the long run, a fact...

-Frontline.in The Aadhaar project’s headlong push towards “total” enrolment of Indian citizens threatens the privacy of individuals on an unprecedented scale, while its patchy biometric system acts as a tool of denial for the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the UID chugs along, regardless, fuelled by the avarice of private interests who seek to cash in on citizen data. IN the last seven years, the right to privacy of Indian citizens has been...