-Livemint.com * English speakers are richer, more educated and more likely to be upper caste, data from the Lok Foundation survey shows * Hindi is both the most widely spoken first language and second language in India English speakers are very much India’s elite, and their proportion may be shrinking, new data on the demographic profile of English language speakers in India suggests. The 2011 Census showed English is the primary language—mother tongue—of 256,000...

-The Times of India BENGALURU: Insurance regulator IRDAI on Friday came out with new rules that will have widespread ramifications for health insurers and the general public. Insurers henceforth cannot decline coverage to those who have used opioids or anti-depressants. Nor can they exclude those with a history of clinical depression, personality disorders, sociopathy, psychopathy, or neurodegenerative disorders. They cannot exclude kids suffering from development disorders such as Down’s syndrome, cerebral...

-The Indian Express BJP is attempting to use citizenship issue to woo Namasudra community in Bengal. It is generally believed that unlike other states of India, caste and religion don’t play a significant role in West Bengal’s electoral politics. Academic literature often articulates this as West Bengal’s “exceptionalism”. As a result of the electoral decline of the Left Front and some limited attempts by the Trinamool Congress at community-based mobilisation, the...

-The Indian Express World Press Freedom Index 2019 reveals an increased sense of hostility towards journalists across the world, with violent attacks in India leading to at least six Indian journalists being killed in the line of their work last year. In the backdrop of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, India dropped two places to be ranked 140th out of 180 countries in the global press freedom index analysis released Thursday...

-Hindustan Times The 15th Finance Commission (FC) has to submit its report in October 2019, which will be another important event in the evolution of India’s fiscal federalism framework. The tenure of the Narendra Modi government has seen important changes in India’s fiscal federalism set-up such as the abolition of the Planning Commission (PC) and the roll-out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The 15th Finance Commission (FC) has to submit...