-The Indian Express Eight years after the Sachar committee report on the condition of Muslims and creation of a Ministry of Minority Affairs, a post-Sachar evaluation committee, headed by former JNU professor Amitabh Kundu, has concluded that though a start has been made in addressing development deficits of the community, government interventions have not quite matched in scale the large numbers of the marginalised. Poverty levels among Muslims, the committee found, remained...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre is mulling setting up five universities with 50% seats reserved for religious minorities, a "Muslim outreach" by Congress ahead of the 2014 elections. The universities will come up in the hubs of Muslim and Christian population in five states. "These universities will have 50% reservation for minorities with socio-economic backwardness as key determinant. Minorities are not just religious groups but also social groups as...

-The Telegraph A panel of experts has watered down a proposal by the UPA government to set up five minority universities, citing legal hurdles. The committee, headed by Indian Council of Social Science Research chairman Sukhadeo Thorat, has suggested that the institutions be set up as central universities with their focus on minorities, instead of minority institutions as proposed. The committee submitted its report to the minority affairs ministry last month, a senior...

-The Indian Express Mumbai: If a sample study conducted by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, is anything to go by, schools in Maharashtra have failed to bridge the caste divide between students. The study found that more 60 per cent of standards VII and IX students at Talsar village in Ratnagiri district want to make same-caste friends, while 40.5 per cent are against inter-caste marriage. Further, 35.7 per cent of students...

-The Times of India Last year's unusually dry summer and this winter's unprecedented snowfall, the worst in nearly 50 years, in Ladakh's Changtang area has claimed over 18,000 "pashmina" goats, the source of one of the finest varieties of wool that has put the region on the world map. Changtang is a high altitude plateau in southeastern Ladakh, inhabited by Changpa (Champa) nomads, and known for its harsh and semi-arid weather with...