-The Telegraph New Delhi: About 50 academics and activists have written to President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a judicial probe into the police baton charge on Banaras Hindu University students last night. The students were protesting vice-chancellor G.C. Tripathi's alleged shaming of a girl student who had been molested on the campus on Thursday evening. In their common letter to the President - the Visitor of the university...

-Deccan Herald As a railway buff, I love the technology story of the bullet train. However, it is not appropriate for India, in the current configuration as negotiated by Prime Minister Narendra and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail line, for which they laid the foundation stone on September 14. The Shinkansen bullet trains were introduced in Japan in 1964 and traversed the 500-plus kilometre distance between Tokyo...

-Hindustan Times India’s economic growth slumped to 5.7% in April-June quarter, which experts attribute to demonetisation that sucked out 86% of the currency in circulation from a largely cash-reliant economy. The government’s expected measures to revive a stuttering economy could mainly target the MSME SECtor and involve a re-look at public-private project norms to boost investment without breaching its fiscal deficit target for the year, officials involved in the process told HT. Besides,...

-TheWire.in Eleven years after order, none of the states have conformed to the guidelines, says a Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative report. New Delhi: Eleven years ago, on this day, the Supreme Court had issued directions to the Centre and state governments to transform their police forces into professional, accountable and efficient service units. However, a recent report shows that compliance remains far from satisfactory with none of the governments enacting laws to...

-TheWire.in The cashless future that demonetisation promised never came, and many in rural Marathwada scoff at the idea. Aurangabad: Ten months after currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 were scrapped on November 8 last year, the ghost of demonetisation continues to haunt Deepak Badavne. In early November, Badavne had harvested 31 quintals of cotton from his 2.5 acre farm. He expected good returns on it. “The trader arranged for the truck...