-Live Mint Evasion of duty of over Rs.50 lakh to be made non-bailable offence; arrest provisions under service tax proposed The government may find itself in hot Water on budget proposals that make duty evasion beyond a certain threshold a non-bailable offence, allow arrest on suspected withholding of service tax, and provide tax authorities powers to recover dues from a defaulter’s bankers.   Although finance minister P. Chidambaram in his budget presentation on 28...

-The Hindustan Times Indore: After Jal Satyagraha (insistence on truth with Water) and hunger strike, scores of striking adhyapaks (teachers having non-permanent jobs) in Shajapur district climbed on trees and raised slogans against the Madhya Pradesh government for not fulfilling its promises. Earlier, on Saturday over 25 teachers sat on a Jal Satyagraha to press their demands for ‘equal work, equal pay’ as well as all the benefits that their regular counterparts...

-Outlook An international row over a ‘world record’ “It’s 120 per cent fake,” Professor Yuan Long Ping (82), hailed as the father of ‘hybrid rice’ in China, had fumed last week in reaction to the claim that five farmers from Bihar had all individually grown more rice per hectare than the ‘world record’ of 19.4 tonnes per hectare in China—the best figure being 22.4 ton­nes. He would believe the claim, he...

-The Hindu Saurastra: Half a dozen villages along the coastal area of Saurashtra’s Bhavnagar district are up in arms against an environmental public hearing on March 5 for a proposed 6,000-MW nuclear power plant . The plant is expected to come up in Mithi Virdi village and has been tentatively named after it. If it comes up, it would be the second nuclear power plant in Gujarat after the one at Kakrapar...

-The Times of India Despite the recent hype, one of the key drivers of women's empowerment — jobs for women — remains neglected and forgotten by policymakers. A recently released survey shows that more women are remaining home-bound doing domestic duties than a decade ago, even though a large number of them are willing to work. These are some of the findings of a report of the National Sample Survey Organisation...