-The Hindu Batting for about 30 lakh sugarcane farmers of Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has expressed his reservation over the Central Government’s proposal to de-regulate the sugar and cane sectors, which would effectively signal an end to the State’s control over reserving the cane area of the sugar mills and fixing the procurement price for the growers. At his meeting with the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council,...

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen believes that Team Anna's reading of corruption or what causes corruption or how it can removed is wrong, and that they need to look at how the economic system operates.   In an exclusive interview with CNN-IBN Deputy Editor Sagarika Ghose, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said that instead of fasting and protesting, one should try and change the systems that provided incentives for corruption. Below is the transcript of...

The cartoon controversy provides the possibility of interrogating the functioning of the academic system to understand its relationship with the downtrodden masses. A new deliberation is needed in order to make the academic world more sensitive and responsive towards the issues and concerns of the subaltern-oppressed communities. This will be an ethical incentive for the present-day dalit movement in India and can bring greater democratisation to the education system. Harish Wankhede...

From filling in voter information gaps to catching improprieties, the media has helped keep elections fair and transparent Our knowledge and awareness of the world today is largely determined by what the media decides to inform us. The priorities that the media sets often become the priorities of the public. In our country, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary are strongly complemented by the media. No one could vouch for...

School texts that teach young minds that politics is a contentious and critical but reasonable activity, that it is not merely a set of demands and commands, and that politicians have to be responsive and accountable are naturally disliked by the political class. This is the tone of all the Political Science textbooks of Standards IX-XI brought out after 2006. The nurturing of a culture of critical public opinion seems...