-The Hindu The petition against the Ambedkar-Nehru cartoon, published in The Hindu (“Humour is by no means exempt from prejudice”, June 8, 2012), makes for sad reading. Sad, because it bears the signatures of some of our best scholars, universally admired for their rigorous scholarship, who nevertheless chose to sign a petition short on facts. The petition asks the NCERT's Textbooks Review Committee to “reconsider the Ambedkar cartoon (and possibly other such...

-The Hindu The following is an extract from the NCERT's political science (Class XII) textbook that has sparked a controversy due to a cartoon depicting the anti-Hindi agitation of 1965. (According to Yogendra Yadav, former chief adviser to the NCERT on the preparation of the textbook, a reading of the text accompanying the cartoon would show that the chapter was not aimed at denigrating the anti-Hindi agitation, but was actually a...

It relates to the anti-Hindi agitation in the State; politicians say it depicts the student agitators in a poor light Just as the controversy over a cartoon on B.R. Ambedkar in a textbook prepared by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is settling down, another row has erupted over a cartoon in a class XII Political Science text book of the NCERT. The cartoon relates to the anti-Hindi...

There are major issues at stake in the Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development to be held on 20-22 June. Yet governments of developing countries have not given adequate importance to the run-up to the conference. As has happened in the climate change negotiations, the outcome draft now under negotiation shows a concerted move to rewrite the terms of global environmental governance. There is an attempt to push through the decidedly...

-The Indian Express   Rich countries must stop lecturing developing countries and accelerate their own efforts to cut emissions There is no shortage of people telling India what to do on low-carbon growth, but there is a shortage of understanding of what India is doing. Even the UNDP in its recent Asia Pacific Human Development Report urges emerging economies like India to do more for climate change. If one appreciates what India’s emissions are...