-The Hindu Subsidies on cooking gas, kerosene and diesel have resulted in perverse outcomes not envisaged when they were introduced With the Aadhaar-based direct cash transfer scheme facing so many glitches in implementation, any hopes that the country’s energy sector can soon dismount the subsidy tiger it has been riding so dangerously have receded into the background. Had the Aadhaar scheme worked satisfactorily, the next logical step would have been to extend...

-Open Democracy Were Ram Singh and his cohort simply claiming a notion of masculinity promoted every day by their role models in politics, business and the media? Ruchira Gupta writes of the steady creeping of a rape culture into the fabric of India, and what needs to be done to counter the idea that women are commodities Let us talk about Ram Singh, the chief rapist accused in the case of Damini,...

-PTI MELBOURNE: Internet and other components of information communication and technology (ICT) industry annually produces more than 830 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, and is expected to double by 2020, a new study has found. Researchers from the Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) and Bell Labs explain that the information communications and technology (ICT) industry, which delivers Internet, video, voice and other cloud services, produces about 2...

-Outlook Gollaprolu (AP): The direct cash transfer scheme is not a "jaadu ki chhadi" (magic wand) to reform a "broken down" delivery system and problems are there in its implementation, Union Minister Jairam Ramesh said today.  "It (Direct Benefits Transfer Scheme) is not a single 'jaadu ki chhadi' (magic wand). It is an experiment. The world's largest experiment in administrative reforms," he told reporters here. The Union Rural Development Minister's remarks came against...

-The Hindu When a political party puts up candidates with criminal charges, it results in the alienation of large sections of people from the political class and politics itself When the Election Commission of India turned 60 on January 25, 2010, The Hindu opened its lead editorial of January 29 with the words, “After overseeing 15 General Elections to the Lok Sabha, the ECI, in its diamond jubilee year, can with justifiable...