-The Telegraph   A student was stabbed and injured last night as violence flared at Osmania University over a “beef festival” organised by Dalit students to assert their right to eat their traditional food on the campus. The government, worried that the issue may snowball and re-ignite the Telangana movement at its epicentre, has swamped the campus with paramilitary and police who caned the fighting students and fired tear gas. Still, skirmishes continued...

Nagpur orange’s survival hinges precariously on its return to sustainable cultivation. Farmers have woken up to this, but will the government? A beaming Uday Wath hugs the trunk of his sturdy, disease-free Nagpur orange tree. All around him are trees drooping with the fruit, large and healthy. The tree trunks are singularly free of both telltale gummosis wounds and bluish white bordeaux paste, the chemical meant to prevent them. Not more than...

Aamra ekhon-o boli ni kon kagoj porte hobe, kintu agami dine kintu setao bole debo. (Till now, we haven’t told which newspapers must be read, but in the future, we will do that as well.) – West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, speaking on March 29 in defense of her government’s decision to bar all but 13 newspapers from more than 2,400 government-approved libraries across the state. “Kunal Ghosh, associate editor...

-The Times of India Glaring lapses in the investigation of the case against Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra have come to light, which all but prove that the aim of the probe was to teach the academic a lesson. A senior police officer and a local Trinamool Congress leader literally engineered the case against Prof Mahapatra when none existed. A police officer who did not want to be named said Amit Sardar,...

-The Deccan Herald The officialdom’s reluctance to part with public information sought under the Right to Information Act (RTI) is by now a well known fact. When nodal officers concerned disclose information, they hide more than they reveal, and often end up being penalised by appellate authorities.  However, an RTI reply furnished to an applicant in Devanahalli Taluk near Bangalore is simply shocking as it exposes the utter callousness of the nodal...