-The Indian Express While Gujarat comes on top in terms of providing placement through exchanges, it isn’t the top state when it comes to the number of job-seekers. That’s Tamil Nadu with more than 80 lakh registrations with employment exchanges in first nine months of 2015, as against Gujarat which had only 6.88 lakh registrations. With the exception of Gujarat, where employment exchanges have consistently clocked an over 30 per cent...

-The Hindu The political scientist on the danger to India’s checks and balances, and the perils of the democratisation of mediocrity in universities Professor of political science and a holder of the Madan Lal Sobti Chair, Devesh Kapur has been director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary India at University of Pennsylvania since 2006. Mr. Kapur, who recently co-edited Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design, says our public universities...

-The Hindu BJP lists ‘pro-farmer’ steps; govt. blind to problems: Digvijaya Opposition members in the Rajya Sabha sought to corner the Centre on the issue of agrarian crisis on Tuesday, accusing it of floating policies that were detrimental to farmers’ interests. However, defending the Narendra Modi government, members from the BJP and its allies hailed the “pro-farmer” initiatives taken under his leadership. Prabhat Jha, Parshottam Rupala, Ram Narain Dudi, Sanjay Raut and La....

A recent one-liner about the achievement of the present Central government goes like this: bovine has become ‘divine’ during the NDA’s rule. But why do such jokes originate? Media reports suggest that unprecedented aggression has taken place during the recent months in the name of the peaceful looking animal – cow. Mob lynching and killings by fringe groups have been reported from various parts of the country, especially targeting Muslims and...

-Hindustan Times/ IndiaSpend A two-year-old project in Rajasthan used an unusual strategy to break this pattern among poor tribal communities. Instead of simply increasing their food supply and access — the standard approach for dealing with malnutrition — it attempted to break the tradition of PRIoritising men’s needs first. When the women of this southwestern Rajasthan village sat down to eat, it was usually after the rest of the family had finished...