-Tehelka As change.org starts its Hindi version, Preethi Herman, who heads the largest online social change portal in the country, speaks to Nikita Lamba about how ordinary people are being empowered to bring about the changes they want to see. * What drove you to start this venture in Hindi considering that the netizens of today’s world use English for communication? The lingua franca of about 47 percent of India’s internet population is...

-The Hindu In returning their awards, Nayantara Sahgal and Ashok Vajpeyi have reminded Modi of two duties he has neglected — that of upholding a citizen's right to life and of protecting an artist’s right to creativity. Their angst is also directed at the silence of fellow writers and literary institutions.A writer not only seeks to reform a particular injustice in society. She is a tuning fork, a warning signal about...

-The Hindu In the Net neutrality debate, there is a conflict between two core values: ease of access and neutrality. The ease of access promised by applications like Free Basics compromises neutrality and may later morph into a method of predatory pricingIf programs that bring access to a part of the Internet in the immediate future were to entrench themselves, it could eventually lead to telecom companies abusing their dominant positionsIn...

-The Hindu The idea of attacking poverty by increasing mobile connectivity in a country that ranks 55 in the Global Hunger Index is just fantasy Interviewer: What would you regard as the most outstanding and significant event of the last decade? Siddhartha: The… war in Vietnam, sir. Interviewer: More significant than landing on the moon? Siddhartha: I think so, sir. — “Pratidwandi” (The Adversary), 1970 The most fundamental debate for our youth is the choice between Android,...

-The Hindu Business Line A narrow focus on growth-led development is the cause of the world’s sustainability crisis, not its solution The world’s political leaders meet in New York today to adopt a ‘sustainable development’ agenda. On the face of it, this sounds very hopeful. It signals that finally, humanity may move towards making peace with the earth, even as it erases the shame of over two billion people still living in...