-The Hindu Unnerved by the Indian stand, IT monopolies are propagating the myth that a multilateral governance structure will kill the decentralised, multi-stakeholder nature of the Internet and lead to ‘government control' Last year, in a statement to the U.N. General Assembly, India sought the creation of a U.N. Committee on Internet-Related Policies (CIRP) in order to democratise global Internet governance, which at present is either U.S.-controlled, or subject to the policies...

Clinging on to their cultural moorings are monks from Assam's Majuli islands who were forced to relocate in the 1970s With land swallowed by the Brahmaputra, many monasteries of Assam's Majuli island were relocated to the mainland in the Seventies. The lives of the monks have never been the same. Indrakanta Mahanta, the head of the Vaishnava sattra (monastery), Bogi Ai, can't remember when somebody last asked him about Majuli. And there...

-The Economist West Bengal’s populist chief minister is doing badly. Yet she typifies shifts in power in India BUYER’S remorse is common enough in the dusty markets of Kolkata, a delightful if crumbling great city, once known as Calcutta and still capital of the state of West Bengal. Those who buy cheap plastic goods or plaster-of-Paris busts of Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal’s cultural hero, may come to regret their haste. Likewise, many who...

Professor Arjun Appadurai is a Mumbaikar at heart; coming to the city is an annual pilgrimage for this internationa­lly renowned cultural theorist and anthropologist. Appadurai, 62, who studied in Mumbai’s Elphinstone College, is currently Goddard Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He has been consultant and advisor to a wide range of public and private foundations such as The Smithsonian. In his seminal work Disjuncture and...

-The Economic Times   The Bombay High Court has ordered filmmaker Subhash Ghai to return to Maharashtra government 20-acres allotted for his film institute. The court indicted Union science and technology minister Vilasrao Deshmukh for "misusing his official position" as chief minister by showing "undue favours" to Ghai. However, the court said there was no need for a CBI probe into the land deal since there was no material to indicate that its...