-MoneyLife.in Less than a week ago, the rainfall deficiency was nearly 50% of average. In a span of just six days, the deficiency was cut almost in half. Combine this feat with the fact that monsoon covered the entire country, four days earlier than normal and how does the glass now look? This is one season, so unpredictable that explains the heightened media interest in the monsoon progress. Much has been hyped...

-The Hindu Journalists need to adopt a set of integrity measures in order to police the boundaries between the market and political power   Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person and the world’s wealthiest woman, is seeking three board seats following her purchase of 18.7 per cent of Fairfax which owns most papers in Australia not controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd. There has already been considerable upheaval in two of the Fairfax papers...

-The Times of India   Higher education in India should not perpetuate inequality of opportunity It's admission time again. Charming images of 'freshers' entering the campus and glossy advertisements of the universities we had never heard before hide the harsh reality of educational mortality from school to higher education. Elaborate coverage of rising cutoffs and entrance tests draw our attention to individual merit and luck. We tend to forget the overwhelming role of...

-The Hindu House-hunting for a Muslim in Delhi can be a long and excruciating exercise….  I shudder even now when I think of the incident of my husband, a media relations executive, being called a terrorist. Five years ago, in Dwarka’s Sabka Ghar Apartments here in the Capital, we were not able to get our favourite news channels on cable TV. My husband had been calling the cablewallah without much success. One day...

-The Economic Times The last time the taxman went after those with Swiss bank accounts, many said they had no clue how their names cropped up; quite a few escaped saying that they were non-residents, some simply ignored the missives, and only a few broke down and confessed. And there were the hard nuts who, without losing their equanimity, thought through the situation, invited their accountants and lawyers over for dinner, and...