-The Telegraph   Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google have refused to buckle under pressure from the Indian government to take down content that telecom minister Kapil Sibal and the babus on Raisina Hill find objectionable. Sibal told reporters the government wanted the Big Boys of Cyberspace to remove “abusive” comments and images that could ignite a tinderbox of passions in the country but they had refused to do so...

After so many wrongs, the Planning Commission may have just got it right. According to leaked accounts, its universal health coverage proposal may become reality as early as the next five-year Plan. Once this policy is in place, India can legitimately enter the club of welfare states through the front door. Now, at last, it has a scheme that is truly inclusive for it includes us all. When implemented, this measure...

Five States did manage a significant decline in the average number of farm suicides between 2003 and 2010. However, more States have reported increases over the same period. The television story was genuine and sensitive. At least 90 farmers, it said, had committed suicide in two months in Andhra Pradesh. These were cotton growers. Actually, last year, Andhra farmers killed themselves at the rate of 210 each month on average, according...

-Imphal Free Press   Macha Leima has charged that the RTI act has become meaningless and the state government has failed to implement the flagship programs of the centre in totality in the state. A press release by T Demona, coordinator of Macha Leima has stated that the act has been pivotal in bringing transparency in the workings of the government. Yet, the commission has remained defunct as the Chief Information Commissioner...

The 11th five-year plan promised the nation “inclusive growth”. It marked a departure from the earlier official position that the “benefits of growth” would automatically “trickle down” to the poor, and that if growth was not actually benefiting the poor, then the reason lay in its not being high enough. The 11th plan, by contrast, conceded that the “benefits of growth” did not automatically “trickle down”, but argued that growth...