-The Hindu ‘Construct dwellings at a cost of Rs. 2 lakh each for the houseless' Gulbarga: A convention of houseless people has urged the State government to frame a separate housing policy for the poor of rural areas who are houseless and do not own SITes, and constitute a village development authority on the lines of the urban development authority. The convention was jointly organised by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions...

-The Hindu The Act grants legal recognition to the rights of traditional forest dwelling communities Jawhar (Thane): The Additional Collector's headquarter here was abuzz even before its gates opened on Monday morning. Around 100 tribals from various villages in the Jawhar tehsil had already queued to begin what they had aptly named as first of its kind ‘RTI Satyagraha' against the alleged unlawful implementation of The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest...

-The Times of India Big pharma may be crying hoarse over India's "weak'' intellectual property environment, but over the past five years or so, they have introduced only a handful of their patented blockbusters in the country. That's not all. The contribution of patented drugs in the Rs 72,000-crore pharma retail market is not even 1%, indicating that multinationals have been traditionally slow and have a poor track record in introducing...

-Bloomberg The corpse of Indian farmer Bengali Singh burned to ash atop a blazing funeral pyre on the banks of the river Ganges in 2006. Five years later, the dead man was recorded as being paid by India's $33 billion rural jobs program to dig an irrigation canal in Jharkhand state. Officials in his village and the surrounding region used at least 500 identities, including those of Singh, a disabled child of...

-Civil Society Online Accreditation is the act of granting credit or recognition. It is to be preceded with a process where facts, figures and professional ethics are scrutinized so that the desired certification of competency, authority or credibility is presented. Only the best suited with the requiSITe track record are to find themselves in the approved list. In India, the much talked about and well critiqued initiative wherein consultants undertaking the responsibility...