-The Times of India Online hacker group Anonymous targeted websites of the Supreme Court of India and the All India Congress Committee on Thursday to protest Internet censorship. Anonymous launched Operation India with a tweet that said, "Namaste #India, your time has come to trash the current government and install a new one. Good luck." A YouTube video uploaded on May 15 by user Sen0nymous, titled 'Operation India Engaged', issued a call to...

A parliamentary panel has sought to put strict safeguards on the government’s powers to acquire land and recommended that no plot under cultivation be taken away unless as a last resort. The recommendation — one of many on the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2011 — seeks to give a leg-up to food security, but if accepted, could pose a challenge to the expansion of industries. “The concept of food security...

'We think that the short, heated and not very well informed debate in the Parliament did not do justice to the responsibility that a democratic society has towards its future generations' May 11, 2012 Prof. Parvin Sinclair Director NCERT Subject: Resignation as Chief Advisers ( Pol Sc) Dear Professor Sinclair, We have followed the discussion in both Houses of the Parliament today regarding the cartoons published in the NCERT's Political Science Textbooks. We also heard the...

The Government of India has formally launched the news Guidelines of the MGNAREGA based on the Mihir Shah Committee report. The news guidelines include many new works under conservation activities and it strengthens the hands of the village panchayats and gram sabhas. However, the list of works does not include the activities under the system of rice intensification (SRI) which encourages scientific method of paddy cultivation with better yield in...

Just in case our friends in the media were looking for more evidence, a new ILO report clinches the connection between old age pension and a country’s well being. The ILO report “World Social Security Report 2010/11: Providing coverage in times of crisis and beyond” puts India’s social security coverage in perspective of its peers. (the report can be accessed at http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_146566.pdf.  India is not only nearly at the bottom...