-The Hindustan Times All colleges may soon have to get accredited, and foreign varsities will be able to offer joint degrees with Indian universities – without the enactment of laws making accreditation mandatory and allowing foreign institutions entry into India. With 14 bills aimed at a plethora of higher education reforms stuck at different stages of parliamentary approval, the UPA has decided to try and use existing laws to draw up regulations...

-CNN-IBN The Opposition is crying foul over reports of global retail giant Walmart lobbying US lawmakers to get into India. The BJP and the Left Front joined hands to collectively take on the government, demanding an inquiry into reports that Walmart had spent Rs 125 crore on lobbying with US lawmakers to facilitate its expansion into markets including India over the past four years. The BJP, in fact, compared it to...

-The Hindu Bangalore: The Lokayukta Special Court on Wednesday convicted L. Govindaraju, Bruhat Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) councillor for Ganesh Mandir ward, for demanding and accepting a bribe and sentenced him to four years’ rigorous imprisonment, besides fining him Rs. 90,000. Barely three months after he was elected, Govindaraju (Congress) was caught red-handed by Lokayukta sleuths accepting a bribe of Rs. 2 lakh from Uday Kumar, a builder, in July 2010. The Lokayukta...

-The Hindu The trials and tribulations of Ashok Khemka and Sanjiv Chaturvedi expose Haryana’s intolerance of upright bureaucrats When Haryana’s top land registration official, Ashok Khemka, decided to probe Robert Vadra’s land deals in the State, he perhaps never anticipated the kind of animosity that his actions against Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law would generate within the government. Or, maybe he did, but went ahead nevertheless, hoping that a proactive media would...

-The Hindustan Times Millions of parents and their children may soon no longer have to bear the risks associated with unregulated playschools with dubious teaching methods and crumbling infrastructure that often charge high fees but fail to deliver on promises. The human resource development (HRD) ministry, headed by newly appointed MM Pallam Raju, on Thursday got state governments to agree to expand the Right to Education Act (RTE) to cover preschools. Under...