Depletion of groundwater and its increasing pollution could be leading to a silent, nationwide public health crisis as aquifers in many stretches across India are becoming unfit for drinking, according to the government's own figures. Data submitted in Parliament by the water resources ministry on Monday shows groundwater in pockets of 158 out of the 639 districts has gone saline. It says in pockets across 267 districts, groundwater contains excess fluoride;...

Jim Clifton, chairman and chief executive officer of US research and consulting services company Gallup Inc., says he does not understand art, golf or sailing. He only understands polls as he grew up in Nebraska interviewing farmers and ranchers for his client Cargill. Clifton acquired privately owned Gallup in 1988 and merged it with his own poll company that he started at 18. Today, Gallup is known for its presidential...

The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a Dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...

Going by just the number of countries, the global average for the age of consent is 16. The government's proposal of criminalizing consensual sex with any person below 18 will put India in the company of countries such as Rwanda, Uganda, Chile, Peru and Egypt, none of whom can be counted among liberal democracies. While the age of consent across the world ranges from 13 to 18, the bulk of the...

While freedom of speech and expression is an individual right, its actualisation often relies on a vast infrastructure of intermediaries. In the offline world, this includes newspapers, television channels, public auditoriums, etc. It is often assumed that the internet has created a more robust public sphere of speech by doing away with many structural barriers to free speech. But the fact of the matter is that even if the internet enables...