-The Hindu Giving up corporate jobs and fat salaries, an increasing number of young men and women are committing their lives to providing education to India’s poorest   “I had career goals, now I set myself happiness goals. Giving and getting happiness in return,” says Pracheta Sharma, and somehow that does not sound one bit corny. Sharma, along with two other friends Mainak Roy and Rahul Bhanot, is working on a project...

-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Better known as Jharkhand’s waterman, Simon Oraon had always been more popular among farmers in the district’s Bedo block than the country’s newspaper-reading public. But all that changed on Monday, when the President’s office announced that he would be given the coveted Padma Shri award for his contribution to environment conservation. Oraon, 83, has been waging a war against drought since the day he dropped out of school as...

-The Hindu Anand Vihar in east Delhi reported the most pollution All six north Indian cities for which data was available had worse air quality than Beijing in 2015, The Hindu’s analysis of official data shows. However the south’s comparatively better air quality levels hide some lethal truths. Launched in April 2015, India’s National Air Quality Index portal produces an Air Quality Index (AQI) value for around 15 cities based on the most...

-Frontline The Janlokpal Bill passed by the Delhi Assembly on December 3 fails to meet the goals of the 2011 anti-corruption movement and is a pale shadow of the 2014 Bill. IT took the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government, which came to power in Delhi with a massive mandate in the Assembly elections held in February, 10 months to seek to fulfil one of its key election promises: the passage of...

-The Hindu We need to provide full Internet at prices people can afford, not privilege private platforms. This is where India’s regulatory system has to step in The airwaves, the newspapers and even the online space are now saturated with a Rs. 100 crore campaign proclaiming that Internet connectivity for the Indian poor is a gift from Facebook which a few churlish net neutrality fundamentalists are opposing. In its campaign, Facebook is...