-The Times of India NEW DELHI: What is driving the fellowship hike protests across centrally-funded institutions such as the IITs, IISc,NITs or the IISERs? The last hike for the 1.25 lakh research scholar community was in 2014, that too after a gap of four years. With no hike since then and no communication from the government, scholars across institutions have joined hands to launch a nationwide movement demanding a better stipend. Apart...

-Livemint.com Despite the rush in the construction of toilets since the launch of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’s launch on 2 October, India has the highest rate of open defecation in the world The Swachh Bharat Mission hopes to make India open-defecation free by October 2019. But, despite the rush in the construction of toilets since the scheme’s launch, India has the highest rate of open defecation in the world. According to a new...

-The Hindu They will soon become more than just a political liability The BJP’s poor performance in the recent Assembly elections underscores the extent of India’s agrarian distress and the political cost of failing to address it. The root cause of the Indian farmer’s woes is water shortage. Yet, barring policy interventions, this problem will only worsen — to the point that it will become far more serious than a mere political...

-The Hindu Forgiveness can play a reparative role provided it is seen as complementary to justice, not a substitute for it Post-Partition, India has witnessed innumerable acts of collective violence of which three clearly stand out as the most barbaric: the Nellie massacre in Assam in 1983; the horrific slaughter of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984; and the diabolical pogrom in Gujarat in 2002. Need for retributive justice No society that calls itself civilised...

-Livemint.com With barely a few months to go for 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the question across political party lines is: what can really be done now, and quickly? New Delhi: When residents gather around the fire on foggy winter evenings in Rampura, a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district, the conversation often veers toward the declining fortunes in agriculture. Take 27-year-old Pushpendra Singh, who completed his master’s degree in commerce in 2016,...