-The Indian Express Balimukh village, Morigaon: For 11-year-old Jesmina Begum, daughter of Abdul Motin of Atigaon, a village in the flood-ravaged Morigaon district in central Assam, commuting to school has become not only difficult but also dangerous in the recent weeks. “We know that five children drowned in a boat capsize on Tuesday. But what to do? We can’t stop going to school,” Jesmina said. The floods have washed away the road to...

-The Indian Express A series of surrogate advertisements by the gutkha lobby against the ban on it in 14 states in quick succession is now threatening to erupt into a full-scale ad war. The Health Ministry is considering the option of issuing ads of its own to rebut the claims made by gutkha makers. Interestingly, the ministry does not appear to be keen on invoking the anti-tobacco law, which forbids advertising of...

-The Economist Growing inequality is one of the biggest social, economic and political challenges of our time. But it is not inevitable, says Zanny Minton Beddoes IN 1889, AT the height of America’s first Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt II, grandson of the original railway magnate, set out to build a country estate in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. He hired the most prominent architect of the time, toured the chateaux...

-DNA "Frivolous and vexatious” — these were the words that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used while addressing this year’s edition of the annual Right To Information (RTI) convention. His choice of words raises several disturbing questions. The PM conveniently ignored the fact that there is no legal definition of what constitutes “frivolous and vexatious” and there is unlikely to be one in the future. Will one person’s understanding of “frivolous” be...

-The Hindu Cyber security threats have recently emerged as the new defining security challenge in a networked global Internet economy. This explains why National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and his deputy Vijay Latha Reddy Reddy are focussed on engaging the private sector. Like others with similar responsibilities, the national security administration is more deeply concerned about security breaches and attacks through computers, mobiles and other devices than a physical act of war,...