-The Hindu Atleast 40 faculty members from the IITs at Mumbai, Delhi, Khargapur and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have, as of Wednesday, signed the petition lambasting Free Basics — a Facebook initiative to offer free access to a few sites—as ‘misleading’and ‘flawed.’ They will be submitting the petition to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday. “Facebook’s ‘free basics’ (sic) proposal is such a lethal combination, having several...

-Economic and Political Weekly The importance of hand-washing in personal and public hygiene has evolved over the centuries. While the market with its countless number of soaps and hand-wash products for personal hygiene with the accompanying advertising has created a false sense of security, it is community hygiene implemented through public health measures that is really effective in the battle against disease. Lekha D Bhat (lekhabhatd@gmail.com) teaches at the Department of Social...

-Hindustan Times During his town hall address at IIT Delhi, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: “Those who don’t have access to the internet cannot sign online petitions.” But how can he decide what is best for them? Recent research by Amba Kak at the Oxford Internet Institute found that financially constrained users prefer buying shorter duration Internet plans (e.g. three days) with all access, as opposed to WhatsApp-only plans that are...

-Livemint.com What’s essential for the unique identification number to continue is a strong law. But what should it look like? A key thrust of the 2012 writ petition filed in the Aadhaar case (Puttaswamy versus Union of India) was that the executive action in implementing Aadhaar was unconstitutional in the absence of a law. Later developments in the case, including the government’s argument that there is no fundamental right to privacy, and...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government is preparing to crack down on community radio stations for failing to broadcast the Prime Minister's monthly radio programme, Mann ki Baat, and for airing "anti-government" views. The Union information and broadcasting ministry, after a scrutiny of the content of some 30 community radio stations in the National Capital Region, has found broadcasts from most of the stations "objectionable", officials said. "These radio stations that...