-The Times of India Outgoing information commissioner (IC) Shailesh Gandhi has blamed the Delhi high court for frustrating the purpose of the RTI Act by staying several CIC orders. In a 56-page reply filed in the HC in response to a petition against him filed by a CIC official, Gandhi has dismissed charges of bias and questioned the court's practice of granting ex-parte stays on CIC verdicts. "It appears Delhi high court...

Universities should not have to bow to research institutes, writes Debashis Gangopadhyay. Basic Sciences versus Applied Sciences Undermining humanities studies in schools will lead to a large number of science graduates in the market. This is a boon for multinational companies as profits will escalate — the cost of labour being lower. However, the danger to profits persist from another aspect. Students who study science out of their love for a subject are...

-The Hindu The debate over the cartoons used in NCERT textbooks as aids to learning have thrown up a range of issues. The discussion has crystallised around a set of oppositions: motivated political correctness of our elected representatives vs. the necessity of preemptory parliamentary intervention on educational material appropriate for schools; institutional autonomy vs. political responsibility of a state presiding over a diverse and fraught society; the hubris of ‘experts’ vs....

-The Telegraph Shillong: Two teams of National Disaster Response Force personnel were rushed to Meghalaya’s South Garo Hills district today to help rescue possible survivors among the 15 labourers trapped inside a coal mine since last week. The Guwahati-based personnel reached Nengkol in the Rongsa Awe area of Nangalbibra region — from where it is 10km to the coal mines — late this evening. Baghmara, the district headquarters, is around 480km from...

Tuberculosis re-emerges as a major threat as new drug-resistant strains develop because of mismanagement of the disease. At the beginning of the year, doctors at Mumbai’s P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre reported that they had 12 patients infected with TDR-TB, or totally drug-resistant tuberculosis, a condition in which the TB bacilli is resistant to all first- and second-line drugs used in the conventional treatment of the disease. Panic...