In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-The Hindu It’s the centenary year of amateur radio in the country Some collect stamps. Some coins. Many take to painting or gardening or making handicrafts. There are hundreds of hobbies that are pursued just for enjoyment. Amateur radio, or Ham as it is otherwise called, is a unique hobby. A big attraction is that it allows you to communicate from anywhere: from the top of a mountain or from home, or even...

-Press release by International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems dated 30th March, 2021 * New report sounds alarm on control of food tech, farming data, and corporate takeover of UN multilateral agencies. * Civil society  and social movements can fight back, boosting post-pandemic resilience, slashing agriculture’s GHG emissions by 75%, and shifting $4 trillion to sustainable food and farming. The future planned by agribusiness giants could accelerate environmental breakdown and jeopardize...

-The Indian Express These rules come even as a Joint Parliamentary Committee is in the final stages of discussion of a privacy Bill that covers aspects such as the role of social media intermediaries and the reach of Big Tech companies, and the privacy accorded to the users on such platforms. The notification of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, the Government’s first move to regulate...

-The Indian Express Apar Gupta writes: The substance of many of the requirements were never put to public consultation or deliberation by experts. This is particularly the case for the regulations for online news portals and video streaming platforms. In the polarised environment that we now inhabit, there are few public agreements. One of these rare instances is an agreement that social media is broken. For many commentators, this is an area...