-The Hindu Social audits of the mid-day meal scheme by parents can ensure that the world's largest intervention against hunger that also helps keep children in school need not suffer setbacks like the Bihar tragedy This week, 23 children lost their lives after having a mid-day meal served at a school in Bihar's Saran district. Preliminary reports suggest that the school lacked a storage facility for foodgrain which led to contamination and...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Political parties are unlikely to be rapped by the Central Information Commission (CIC) for missing its Monday deadline for appointing Public Information Officers. Though the CIC has recognized parties as public authorities under the RTI Act, it does not have powers to take suo motu action in case of non-compliance, allowing the government at least 45 days to bring in amendments to the RTI Act...

-The Hindu Civil liberties activists have criticised the media for being an IB mouthpiece in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, while others question the role of ‘activist journalists' The battle over the Gujarat encounter killings of 2004 is being fought at multiple levels. An ideological and political conflict has erupted over the ways to fight "terror." The Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are engaged in an unprecedented inter-agency...

-The Hindu Uttarakhand reiterates that our rulers have contemptuous disregard for the advice of the best scientists and would rather listen to contractors and builders to whom they are beholden for funds In the early 1980s, while doing research on the environmental history of Uttarakhand, I sometimes visited the library of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Dehradun. Most of the journals in the library dealt with geology and earth sciences,...

-The Hindu There has been no public debate on the level of watch citizens can be put through, and on what the red lines should be while using intrusive mechanisms The tussle between government agencies' need for a better, faster and real-time interception, surveillance and monitoring mechanism through the Central Monitoring System (CMS), on the one hand, and demands by privacy, civil rights and free speech activists, for ensuring higher privacy for...