-The Hindu Journalism, which is often characterised by "superficiality and dilettantism," will benefit greatly from the contributions of scholars covering serious issues such as the agrarian crisis in India, according to N. Ram, Chairman, Kasturi and Sons, which publishes The Hindu. Delivering a lecture on ‘News Media and Agrarian Issues' at the Tenth Anniversary Conference of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies (FAS) Mr. Ram urged scholars and specialists to conduct workshops for...

-The Hoot We can either spend another year discovering how much the old model is disintegrating or we can explore alternatives. But India has not developed a tradition as yet of not-for-profit journalism, says SEVANTI NINAN. Two recent developments at the New York Times and at Time Inc. which publishes Time magazine underscore the fact that financing has and will remain become the number one issue for the future of journalism as...

-The Indian Express Kutch (Gujarat): Bhajan Singh, 62, remembers the time curious villagers turned up to see a borewell his father Gopal Singh had dug up. The year was 1969 and it was the first time Sumrasar village, near Bhuj in Kutch district, had had a borewell. Few had ever seen it work, as they depended entirely on rainwater for the barely one crop they harvested a year. Originally from Pakistan, Gopal...

-The Indian Express Odisha: A December night two desperate men, held captive by a labour contractor, were asked this, and had to make a choice. DEBABRATA MOHANTY reports on the latest victims of Orissa's vicious migration cycle It had been a fortnight that Dialu Niyal and Nilambar Dhangdamajhi had been held captive and subjected to physical and verbal abuse. Nothing though had prepared them for what happened on December 15 night deep...

-BBC A survey done earlier this year shows that public facilities in the poorest regions of India have steadily expanded, improving the lives of people there, writes development economist Jean Dreze. Once upon a time, not so long ago, public facilities in the poorest districts of India were few and far between. Most people were left to their own devices and they lived in the shadow of hunger, insecurity and exploitation, with no...