-The Hindu Gondi is the lingua franca of the Maoist movement today, but All India Radio does not broadcast even a single new bulletin in the language. One winter morning, in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh, I was watching a group of Adivasi kids peering into their mobile phones. The early morning sun was mellow, and they were so engrossed that they did not notice me drawing near. “We are doing Bultoo...
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The curious case of ‘nowhere’ children -Amit K Giri & SP Singh
-The Hindu Business Line Those neither at school nor at work should also be seen as ‘child labour’. The state is responsible for their well-being In order to align with the provisions as contained in The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE, 2009), the Union Cabinet in May, 2015, gave its approval for moving official amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012. This...
More »World Bank opposes Facebook’s Free Basics -Yashwant Raj
-Hindustan Times Washington: Mark Zuckerberg’s Free Basics, the free but restrictive internet service that has run into trouble with Indian authorities, has picked up yet another opponent, the World Bank. Its World Development Report released Wednesday called Free Basics, which is a part of Facebook’s internet.org initiative, the “antithesis of net neutrality and a distortion of markets”. The bank is not opposing Free Basics specifically, or its Indian rollout. It believes any attempt...
More »Union Budget likely on February 29
-The Hindu The government aims to sustain high growth and is likely to incorporate a 3-year road map. The NDA Government will present Budget 2016-17 in Parliament on February 29, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said on Thursday. The Government aims to sustain high growth and may incorporate a two-three year roadmap for economic policies, he said. “We are working hard on Budget that will be presented on February 29 and that...
More »What Free Basics did not intend to do -Parminder Jeet Singh
-The Hindu The public now sees the Internet not just in market terms, but as a social phenomenon that requires public interest regulation. In its aggressive campaign for Free Basics, couched in simplistic developmental language, Facebook underestimated the political sophistication of the Indian public. It must be regretting it now. The social networking service’s reportedly Rs. 100-crore campaign, through double full-page newspaper advertisements, billboards and television, appears simply to have congealed public...
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