-PTI Will not allow fake news and targeted voter messaging Internet major Google and social Media giants Twitter and Facebook have assured the Election Commission that they will not allow their platforms to be used for anything which affects the sanctity of polls during the campaign period, Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat has said. He said this was tested during the Karnataka elections. “A small pilot was there. That was the beginning. Now...

  There is a list available with the Right to Food Campaign (http://www.righttofoodcampaign.in) – a decentralised network of civil society activists and experts who are working together voluntarily for ensuring food and nutrition security – which shows that 56 persons died between May, 2015 and March, 2018 on account of hunger and starvation despite India having passed the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013. The RTF campaign has compiled the...

-The Hindu Business Line Hounded for her documentary on the horrors of manual scavenging, filmmaker Divya Bharathi holds up a mirror to social indifference A conspiracy of silence — that’s how filmmaker Divya Bharathi describes the uneasy quiet that shrouds the death of men and children in sewage tanks. Earlier this month, when six men choked to death in Delhi, the reaction was on expected lines — nothing beyond knee-jerk moves, she...

-The Telegraph Two reports, published every 3 months of the Quarterly Employment Survey, not released by the Narendra Modi govt New Delhi: Quarterly employment data considered reliable by even critics of the Narendra Modi government have not been released for this year so far, prompting concern the survey may be discontinued to hide potential warts that hold considerable significance in an election year. Two reports of the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) are due...

-Press release by Right to Food Campaign dated 28th September, 2018 17 lakh elderly, widows and differently-abled persons in Jharkhand who qualify for social security pensions, do not receive their entitlement. One important reason is that pension coverage in Jharkhand is not universal. Even those who do receive pensions face chronic selection errors and administrative glitches. In 2016-17, 3 lakh pensioners were deleted as “fake”, though many genuine persons, whose pension...