-Reporters without Borders Six months to the day after the Indian government blocked all communications in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir on 5 August, after revoking its autonomy, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reveals what it is like for journalists trying to work in this territory in the wake of the federal government’s recent measures, which have had little real impact. Kashmiris had few illusions. A week after the supreme court...

-Down to Earth This is because agriculture in India is largely dependent on chemicals including pesticides and their usage has a huge impact on the health of humans, animals, bio-diversity and the environment Pesticides are regulated in India through the Insecticides Act, 1968 and Insecticides Rules, 1971. The experience in administering this Act over the last five decades has exposed certain gaps which spurred the need to propose a new law. The Pesticide...

-Newsclick.in The latest education budget needs condemnation but got kudos. In recent times there has been growing discontent in universities and colleges over rising fees and cost of education. The growing worries about access to higher education for students of modest means extend beyond this, to the steady privatisation of higher education. Already, according to the government’s own data, nearly 77% of the colleges, accounting for about two-thirds of the students, are...

-Hindustan Times Be it growth, enhanced investment, life expectancy, literacy, and health, Bangladesh is doing well Frankly, I blame Henry Kissinger. Way back in the 1970s, he called Bangladesh “an international basket case”. At the time, no doubt, it was. Television images of the frequent devastating floods it suffered confirmed this characterisation. So the description stuck. Today, Bangladesh is a different country. The world may be slow in changing its opinion —...

-TheWire.in Raging arguments over who was indeed Indian were put to rest with a vote that spoke in favour of an Article 5 without religious markers. P.S. Deshmukh had been famously disappointed with the job the drafting committee had done with the citizenship provision. The year was 1949. He had thought that Dr. Ambedkar’s definition of citizenship would make “Indian citizenship the cheapest on earth.” His grouse had been with citizenship by birth....