-The Indian Express Processes of knowledge diffusion reinforce inequalities. We need explicit pro-poor targeting of efforts There is much enthusiasm today for efforts to improve access to information about poor people’s rights and entitlements. In a much-debated recent example, Facebook’s “Free Basics” platform aimed to provide free access to a selected slice of the internet (including, of course, Facebook). In arguing for Free Basics, Mark Zuckerberg said that “everyone… deserves access to...

-The Times of India It's 8:00 am on a Sunday and outside Denzong Cinema in Gangtok's Lal Bazar, the otherwise languid atmosphere is punctured by grocers of two kinds. On one side of the cinema are those who sell vegetables, fruits and spices sourced from outside Sikkim, mostly from Siliguri, 115 km south in West Bengal. On the other side of the cinema, almost completing a triangle, are farmers from the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Doctors have expressed surprise at Union minister Maneka Gandhi's idea of mandatory prenatal sex disclosure with some medics warning that such a move could lead to a steep increase in the abortions of female foetuses and legitimise a criminal practice. They say the idea to reveal the sex of an unborn foetus to every woman presumably to track any attempt to selectively abort female foetuses would provide couples...

-The Times of India Unnao, a district in Uttar Pradesh, rarely hits headlines except when its rabble-rousing MP Sakshi Maharaj says something. Now, though, it is making news for all the right reasons, and aren't the women in the region tickled pink about it. From the district magistrate to the superintendent of police, the chief development officer to the chief medical officer, from the zila panchayat president to the sub-divisional magistrate,...

-The Hindu The audacious and unprovoked attack last week on a group of activists who held a peaceful rally in Rajasthan can only be explained in terms of the rising resentment on the part of the ruling class towards civil society organisations demanding accountability. Flagged off by social activist Aruna Roy, the Jawabdehi Yatra was aimed to spread awareness about government schemes and raise the issue of accountability in their implementation....