-Maintream Weekly In order to reduce and remove the many-sided disadvantages and problems faced by Dalits and adivasis, sub-plans for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have been introduced to ensure adequate and justice-based availability of funds for these communities. Summarising the basic idea and rationale for this, the Planning Commission says: “the persistence of socio-economic backwardness of the SCs and STs in spite of the development efforts had warranted a special...

-Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies World-renowned Journalist P. Sainath has returned to Princeton to teach two courses, beginning this week, in the Program for South Asian Studies. The former rural affairs editor of The Hindu and award-winning "reporter" - he prefers the term to Journalist - has devoted his career to telling the stories of India, uncovering the truth of social problems, rural affairs, poverty and the aftermath of...

-The Indian Express The most important priority for any government in India today should be the health and nutrition of its children. This is a matter of emergency. In many ways, it is more important than even education. Why then has an otherwise sensitive finance minister slashed the budget in the health and nutrition sectors so badly? The budgetary allocations on health and nutrition programmes for children, who are the most vulnerable,...

-The Hindu ‘Liberty of speech, expression cardinal concepts of paramount significance in a democracy' Tuesday's verdict is a victory for a loose coalition of young lawyers, Internet activists and researchers who filed separate petitions but helped each other with backroom work and creating public opinion over the last two years. Among the young lawyers who argued the case is Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founding director of the non-profit, Software Legal Centre,...

-The Hindu Land Bill to be taken up in the next phase of budget session Despite an aggressive Opposition giving the NDA's parliamentary managers a tough time during the first half of the budget session that concluded on Friday, the Modi government found reason to pat itself on the back. With the exception of the contentious Land Acquisition Ordinance, it succeeded in converting five of its six ordinances into Acts of Parliament. On Friday,...