-The Hindu In returning their awards, Nayantara Sahgal and Ashok Vajpeyi have reminded Modi of two duties he has neglected — that of upholding a citizen's right to life and of protecting an artist’s right to creativity. Their angst is also directed at the silence of fellow writers and literary institutions.A writer not only seeks to reform a particular injustice in society. She is a tuning fork, a warning signal about...

-The Indian Express Decades of mismanagement have hobbled India’s mental health programme An event commemorating World Mental Health week opened at the WHO in Geneva this week. At a key session, the Disease Control Priorities project released its recommendations to governments to address the burden of mental disorders. This was timely for India, for few countries have witnessed so many high-profile debates related to mental health while ignoring the centrality of mental health...

-Hindustan Times When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met some prominent billionaires last month, seeking quicker job-creation and investments, many industrialists complained that falling rural demand for goods was rocking their boats too. Incomes of India’s 833 million mostly poor rural population – a huge market for all kinds of goods – are barely rising and it is a cause for worry. Farming contributes just 15% of India’s $2 trillion economy, but half...

-NDTV Why is it that every time anything has to be done about pollution in our cities or in fact large environmental issues, elected governments do very little and it needs the Supreme Court (or other courts) to intervene? Between 1998 and 2001 the Supreme Court issued orders on pollution in Delhi NINETEEN times. On Monday, they intervened again and asked why tolls cannot be imposed on trucks passing through Delhi to...

-The Indian Express The problem is that Aadhaar was never about individual choice, and was never intended to be voluntary. Nandan Nilekani’s plea that the Supreme Court “tweak” its order of August 11 in his article in these pages (‘Why Supreme Court judgment on Aadhaar calls for an appeal’, September 15) is innocent of the experience that people have had with the unique identification (UID) project in the past five years....