-The Hindu Geeta Devi’s neat Hindi signature is written below her photograph – a shy-looking woman with a dupatta covering her head – in an affidavit duly notarised in Haridwar last month. Dehradun district resident Manju smiles out of the photograph on her affidavit, where she states she is just 36 years old. According to the government of Uttarakhand, both Manju and Geeta Devi are dead. After all, both women are manual...

-The Hindu For any law to truly liberate those trapped in manual scavenging, their numbers must first be established by a comprehensive survey Everybody declares with a full heart, and in a low voice, that it is a national shame. From Manmohan Singh and Pratibha Patil to Mukesh Ambani and Aamir Khan, the last mentioned a new convert to the Dalit cause, there is no dearth of people queuing up to take...

-The Business Standard Deconstructing the numbers shows companies have bid smartly to get the best deals The recently concluded sale of 1,800-MHz spectrum through auction to telecom service operators, or telcos, has been declared a damp squib for two reasons: One, only five telcos participated in the auction; and two, the bids added up to Rs 9,407 crore, which was less than a third of the Rs 30,000 crore the government had...

-Business World Wind, water and the sun can help India cut dependence on coal and gas For India, energy security has never seemed more real, more urgent than now. Forty per cent of the country’s 1.2-billion populace is yet to have access to electricity. Even those getting grid supply suffer poor quality of power. Towns see power cuts more than half the day. The country’s energy deficit, according to the Central Electricity...

-The Telegraph Private universities have mushroomed across India, growing from just 10 six years ago to 145 today in a demand-driven surge that has drawn allegations of irregularities, including franchising out courses in violation of rules. Several academics have also questioned the standard of education in most of these varsities, set up by state legislatures through enactment of laws. “Private universities are created by state legislatures so the Government of India has no...