-The Hindu Modi government cracked down on critics: report. U.S.-based human rights watchdog Freedom House has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of “driving India toward authoritarianism” with a “hamfisted lockdown”, scapegoating of Muslims, and a crackdown on critics, and downgraded India’s status from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’, in its annual report. “Under Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader, elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests...

-The Hindu/ PTI Online education is not an option for all as only one in four children has access to digital devices and Internet connectivity, the study says. Closure of 1.5 million schools due to coronavirus pandemic and the resultant lockdowns in 2020 impacted 247 million children enrolled in elementary and secondary schools in India, a UNICEF report has found.  Globally, schools for more than 168 million children have been completely closed for...

-The Indian Express On January 11, the Delhi Home Department notified the appointment of five loss assessors, with L-G Anil Baijal's approval — nearly nine months after the recommendation to appoint assessors were made. Nearly a year after the Northeast Delhi riots, the relief claims commission is faced with the daunting task of evaluating over 2,500 applications disputing the compensation granted to them by the Delhi government, The Indian Express has learnt. While...

-The Indian Express On Monday, around 100 Twitter accounts and 150 tweets related to the farmers’ protests went off the microblogging platform as the IT Ministry directed Twitter to remove these accounts under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act. From a temporary freeze on over 100 Twitter accounts seen as sympathetic to the farm protests to embedding spikes on roads, from diverting a Delhi-bound train to extending the Internet ban in...

-The Hindu The issue is about checking their monopoly power while encouraging their positive externalities and consumer surplus There are ongoing investigations worldwide, including in the European Union and the United States, on the abuse of monopolistic power by the Big Tech firms, especially Facebook and Google. Many compare this with the earlier antitrust investigations in the U.S. on the telecom industry and the break-up of the AT&T dictated by the Department...