-Hindustan Times The latest instance of a lynching triggered by rumours about kidnappers was in Tripura on Thursday. The victim was an activist hired by the state government to create awareness about misleading social media messages. New Delhi: Several fake social media videos and messages containing similar themes of outsiders stealing children have claimed 14 lives across the country since May 20 despite police warning people not to believe in such rumours. Scores...
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Data in a post-truth age -Sonalde Desai
-The Hindu Trust in official statistics is vital for democracy — the new policy must avoid centralisation David Spiegelhalter, president of Royal Statistical Society in the U.K., gave a most unusual presidential address in 2017. Instead of talking about esoteric statistical techniques, he talked about declining trust in numbers in a post-truth society bombarded by Fake news and alternative facts. He recommended to the statistical community that the best way of inspiring...
More »Govt to hire social media monitors for all 716 districts -Swati Mathur
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: After its plan to penalise journalists identified as purveyors of Fake news was nixed by the PMO, the I&B ministry has now decided to set up a social media communication hub and deploy executives to monitor online content across each of India’s 716 districts. The monitoring mechanism, once in place, will be able to read, contextualise and respond to content in most Indian and foreign languages...
More »Job growth or number jugglery -Arun Kumar
-The Indian Express The problem is under-employment. It won’t be resolved if the residually-employed are notionally shifted from the informal to formal sector. In an article in January, Soumya Kanti Ghosh and Pulak Ghosh (Ghosh and Ghosh) claimed that seven million new jobs have been created in the formal sector. Their claim is based on the increase in registration under the Employees Provident Fund (EPFO), National Pension Scheme and Employees State Insurance...
More »Feeding Hungry Children
-Economic and Political Weekly A diverse diet based on local foods is the best alternative to feed millions of malnourished children. What young children in anganwadi centres should be fed as supplementary nutrition is once again under the scanner arising from a difference of opinion between the Niti Aayog and the Minister for Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi. There were news reports last week indicating that the minister has been pushing...
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