-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Days before final hearings on petitions challenging the validity of 'triple talaq', the Supreme Court sought on Monday the Centre's and four states' response on a PIL seeking a ban on the ritual of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Dawoodi Bohra community. A bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul issued notice to four central...

-The Indian Express We have been numbed by a series of lies, myths and fictions about the project. India is at risk of becoming a surveillance state, with faint resistance from libertarians, intellectuals, political parties, the media, or the Supreme Court. Very soon, almost everyone will have an Aadhaar number, seeded in hundreds of databases. Most of these databases will be accessible to the government without invoking any special powers. Permanent surveillance...

-The Hindu State government preparing its response to the model groundwater bill circulated by Central government The State government does not favour the idea of PRIcing groundwater for agriculture. The government, which is fine-tuning its response to the model groundwater bill circulated by the Central government, feels that the text of the model bill provides scope for the idea, which, if translated into action, will only attract controversies, says a senior official. Though...

-The Hindu Business line It must focus on human security and societal development rather than feed the avarice of a golden ghetto minority The discipline of economics has long been obsessed with gross domestic product as the base measure of development. Contemporary economic globalisation and its dominant neoliberal ideology see other considerations as not worth more than a passing glance. Neoliberalism, which used to be referred to as the Washington Consensus, was promoted by...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Acknowledging that women are a disadvantaged section despite comPRIsing nearly half of the population of the country, the Centre is considering lowering income tax for single women, introducing Aadhaar-linked health cards for free basic health check-ups for women and cashless medical service for those who are pregnant. A national policy for women, framed by a group of ministers headed by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, is...