-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...

-India Today The ECI plan to link voter IDs to Aadhaar risks a repeat exclusion of voters, and thus falling afoul of the SC order that forbids denial of service. The Election Commission of India (ECI) is reportedly making renewed efforts to link citizen voter IDs to Aadhaar-the UIDAI's contentious biometric ID, whose creeping overreach was halted by the Supreme Court in September this year. A previous linking effort in 2015, under...

-The Hindu Business Line NITI Aayog’s document sets out economic goals, but there’s no roadmap The NITI Aayog’s Strategy for New India @75 lays out a checklist of priorities for economic policy-makers over the next three years. It sets out as an immediate priority, the ramping up of the investment rate to 36 per cent of the GDP by 2022, from 29 per cent at present in order to hit a growth...

-The Indian Express One-fourth of the urban population lives in these small towns (20,000 to 1,00,000 population). These 7 crore people need amenities to match up to their ‘urban’ status. Many of these towns may not be in the vicinity of big cities. Small towns in India are something of an oxymoron. They are far removed from cities in character and appearance and are constantly struggling to establish their “urbanness”. A...

-Livemint.com The production of ‘mahua’ is finally entering the formal economy as new initiatives seek to upscale this indigenous drink, selling it across the country and even the globe It is a cloudy morning in Nangur village in Bastar district, Chattisgarh. It is a settlement of a little over 400 families, considered fairly large in these parts. We make a bumpy journey down a narrow, unpaved road intermittently shaded by sargi (sal)...