-Express News Service Protests erupted across the state, but the Trinamool Congress government stood firm on its circular on the newspapers that readers of all government libraries should read.   “There is no question of withdrawing the circular. Every government has its own policy and the circular was prepared in accordance with government rules and policies. I knew about it. The chief minister also knew it before it was issued,’’ Abdul Karim Choudhury,...

India, like other Asian countries, has focused its climate change adaptation strategies on rural and urban areas while neglecting the urban fringes, say experts. Peri-urban areas are characterised by haphazard, accelerated expansion and are farthest from basic urban services and infrastructure, according to United Nations-Habitat’s ‘The State of Asian Cities 2010-11’. By 2020, of the projected 4.2 billion urban population of the world, 2.2 billion will be living in Asia, many...

-The Hindu As it stands on the threshold of the Twelfth Plan, India has a historic opportunity to elevate education and healthcare as the strongest pillars of its future development. Yearning for life-building education is unprecedented today. Yet, as Amartya Sen pointed out last year, the system remains deeply unjust. Access to excellence is open to those who can afford it, while the less-affluent majority has been left behind without even...

-The Hindustan Times The UPA’s record of policy flip-flops endures. The latest instance is a ban on exports of cotton that seems headed for revocation less than a week after it was announced. The commerce ministry’s line that India has exported more cotton this season than it can afford to without hurting consumption at home does not wash with partners of the ruling alliance or with the political bosses of cotton...

Mao Zedong's only living grandson has suggested that the ideas of China's Great Helmsman were being misused by groups such as the Maoists in India, who were invoking his image to wage violence against the state. The greater relevance of Mao's philosophy in today's world was “to help maintain peace, stability and development” and create a more equitable global order, he said, suggesting that the former Chairman's ideas of “people's war”...