The Copenhagen Accord on climate change marks a shift from a government pledge to Parliament, environment minister Jairam Ramesh accepted today, but asserted that this would not compromise India’s sovereignty. Ramesh had committed to Parliament before leaving for the UN climate summit in Copenhagen earlier this month that India would only provide information about its domestic actions to curb greenhouse emission to the international community. But the accord crafted on...

Shocked by the “pernicious practice” of publishing “paid news” by some newspapers and television channels – particularly during the recent elections – the Editors Guild of India has strongly condemned this practice, “which whittles down the foundations of Indian journalism.” Taking cognisance of “paid news” at its Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Tuesday, the Guild said: “Both the media organisations and editors who indulge in it, and the customers who offer...

Imagine that the climate summit conference in Copenhagen this weekend was not a gathering of nations. Imagine a gathering of delegates from the many ages of a single nation. The fault lines would not be India and China versus the global rich, but rather China 1800 versus China 1978 versus China 2100. It would be a negotiation not between different lands but between different historical facts, different levels of survivalism....

Once the world's wettest places, Cherrapunji is getting up to 20% less rain every year - and is suffering water shortages. Residents say their heavenly abode in the clouds is hotter and drier than ever before - and they blame it on global warming. Cherrapunji - or Sohra in the local Khasi language - is located in the West Khasi Hills of India's north-eastern state of Meghalaya. "Never were there very...

The process for finalising the parameters for the 2011 Census is on, and a key question is yet to be answered. In response to a question in Parliament, Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Maken said that the census exercise would be conducted between February 9 and 28, 2011. But there was no word on whether information on caste would be elicited. India’s decennial census is the largest data...