-The Hindu If the data on juvenile crime are anything to go by, the annual reports of the National Crime Records Bureau cannot be taken at face value. The National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) annual round-up of crime statistics has in recent years been the subject of extensive media coverage. The parsing of the official data, however, tends to be a superficial exercise, focussing on the big numbers instead of the minutiae. Numbers...

-The Hindu Held to account by the Supreme Court, the Central government is using opaque methods to change the key provisions of the employment guarantee scheme and make it targeted instead of universal. There is a pithy saying in Hindi that the elephant has two sets of teeth, one for show and the other to eat. This seems an apt description of the approach of the Narendra Modi government towards the implementation...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court today asked all authorities to stick to the guidelines laid down by a Constitution bench 54 years ago while invoking the sedition law. The five-judge bench had ruled in 1962 that the sedition law could be activated only if "violence and public disorder" had been incited. The directive today came against a backdrop of complaints that sedition cases were being filed indiscriminately to crush dissent and...

-PTI The observation came as Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for an NGO, said sedition was a serious offence and the law on it was being grossly misused for stifling dissent. New Delhi: Sedition or defamation cases cannot be slapped on anyone criticising the government, the Supreme Court on Monday said in a clear message. “Someone making a statement to criticise the government does not invoke an offence under sedition or defamation law. We...

-The Indian Express The incidence of farmers taking their own lives is higher in regions where cooperative banks are the weakest. Nanded (Maharashtra): The verdant soyabean fields at Digras today are a far cry from the barren landscape they presented only a few months ago. But for residents of this village in Ardhapur taluka of Nanded district, the memories of drought in three out of the last four years will not fade...