To standardise implementation of the Right to Education Act (RTE) and to dispel misconceptions surrounding it, the government has decided to issue a rulebook to schools across maharashtra with easy to follow guidelines. Though it was introduced in 2009, the state has now devised the draft rules to simplify the jargon-loaded Act. “Many schools have misunderstood the Act or are confused about its implementation. Earlier, we had issued government regulations (GRs) that...

For generations, a majority of Vidarbha’s debt-ridden farmers have only grown cotton, making themselves vulnerable to unreliable market conditions. Now, these and other districts facing an agrarian crisis, as well as the rest of the state’s agriculture community may have some reason to smile. Rs 643 crore will be pumped into the state for the farmers, with the government going ahead with its ambitious maharashtra Competitive Agriculture Project (MACP). On Tuesday, the...

There was a time when Kismati Jaiswal's house at Mandala, Mankhurd, would be demolished thrice a week. Each time, she would have nowhere to go with her children. Hundreds like Ms. Jaiswal, from Mumbai's slum pockets, gathered on Azad Maidan on Wednesday for a protest led by social activist Medha Patkar against the Adarsh Housing Society and other land scams in the city. “No one does anything to the powerful. For...

The Mumbai Collector had, in a letter to the Defence Estates Officer, Mumbai Circle, dated July 12, 2004, denied that the government of maharashtra allotted any land to the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society in Colaba. Records obtained using the Right to Information (RTI) Act by the National Alliance of Peoples' Movements (NAPM), which were released on Monday by Ms. Medha Patkar, Simpreet Singh and other activists, show that the Collector accorded...

Latehar, Hazaribagh and Gumla in Jharkhand, Bastar in Chhattisgarh, Chandrapur in maharashtra, the Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya… the list goes on. These are all districts in India where mining companies are locked in a battle with the local population over the mining rights in these regions. Other than fighting mining companies, there are two factors common to all these regions. One, they have fertile land and dense forests. Two, indigenous tribes...