-The Hindu The Sunday Story A series of audacious attacks on minorities and their institutions in Dakshina Kannada indicate police patronage for the perpetrators There is a significant body of evidence to show that the rampant acts of vigilantism witnessed in coastal Karnataka enjoy police patronage. Take, for instance, the July 28 Mangalore Homestay attack. While seeking bail from the High Court for journalist Naveen Soorinje, who was listed as an accused by...

-The Hindu The Sunday Story India's police forces are generally hostile and corrupt. They are also often brutal, as the recent beating of unarmed people in Tarn Tarn and Patna demonstrated. The Indian Police Act of 1861, a colonial relic, needs to be replaced with a law that befits a free country. The former Border Security Force (BSF) Director-General, Prakash Singh, refers to his favourite game of ping pong whenever he has...

-Live Mint Poor children up to the age of six years to get free meals, Bill emphasizes reforms in public distribution system The revised food security Bill, which is expected to be tabled on Friday in the Lok Sabha, has provisions to make state governments pay allowances to beneficiaries in case they fail to provide the foodgrain promised under the proposed legislation, and extends maternity benefits to every pregnant woman and lactating...

-The Hindu   The Dalit-Bahujan theory or Ambedkarism cannot negotiate with funny theories of sociologists like Ashis Nandy. The best way to counter them is to write a better theory Utsa Patnaik, a noted economist said in a small note that she circulated "Ashis Nandy had earlier made approving remarks on the 1988 Deorala burning to death of a young widow in the name of sati (terming it a courageous act in a...

-The Times of India Education researcher Sugata Mitra has won 2013's million-dollar Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) Prize with his 'Hole in the Wall' experiment, showing slum children learning to work a computer and teaching each other minus adult supervision. Speaking with Pratigyan Das, Mitra discussed the dynamics of this venture in India, the radical potential it offers - and how our educational system apparently persists in trying to produce clerks for...