-The Hindustan Times If there is one defining collage of the ongoing monsoon mayhem in Uttarakhand, it's this: multi-storied concrete houses collapsing like a pack of cards into an angry, wild river and cars and lorries being tossed around in the swirling muddy waters, as if they were plastic toys. As I watched the unfolding drama on TV, I remembered what a green campaigner told me some years ago in Uttarkashi:...

-The Hindu     Restrictions on cross-media ownership in offing too The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is all set to recommend the creation of an ‘institutional buffer between corporate owners and newspaper management' to the government. TRAI, which is also the regulator for the broadcasting industry, will also suggest ways to restrict cross-media ownership in line with practices in ‘most other established democracies.' TRAI chairman Rahul Khullar told The Hindu his recommendations would...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet on Tuesday cleared a legislation to set up a long-pending real estate regulator aiming to protect home buyers from unscrupulous developers and Builders. A real estate regulator - to be set up in every state - will ensure that private developers get all their projects registered with it before sale and only after obtaining all necessary clearances. "It will be mandatory for developers under...

-The Hindu   As TRAI prepares to regulate ownership of news organisations to ensure pluralism, big media houses fear shrinking profits and state control by proxy Rahul Khullar, the straight-talking chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), listened attentively to the senior management executive of Bennett Coleman and Co. Limited, one of India's largest media conglomerates. The latter disagreed with the premise of the discussion - that there was a "problem,"...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI and CHANDIGARH: It is not without reason that the quintessential real estate firm has become the epicentre in all scams in India in recent times. From Satyam to 2G, Vadra to Saradha and now Railgate - every scam's trail leads to fraudulent investments and dubious deals in the real estate sector. Not only does the barely regulated sector allows rampant transactions in black money allowing scamsters...