-The Business Standard A five-state study on the effects of digitisation shows the poor in the country love knowledge-based programmes India's poor love digitisation for the choice and quality it offers. Discovery and National Geographic are the most popular channels in some of the poorest parts of the country, largely because the knowledge-based programmes on these channels are considered a substitute for decent education. And, the poor love shows on agriculture,...

-The Business Standard The new institution could play the role of a 'think tank' A high-level meeting to frame a new body to replace the Planning Commission is learnt to have arrived at a broad consensus that allocation of Plan funds should not be the domain of the new entity but of the finance ministry. The new institution, it was agreed, could play the role of a "think tank". Officials in the...

-The Telegraph In her recent book, Green Wars, the environmental journalist Bahar Dutt, writes: "The editor of a leading media house, everytime I pitched a green story, would invariably complain: ‘Environmentalism is stalling growth; all I am interested in is double-digit growth for this country.'" The idea that environmental protection and economic progress are at odds is widely held among India's elite. It is shared by newspaper editors, economists, businessmen, and, not...

-Live Mint As media ownership passes into many kinds of hands, the sensitivities of corporate and political owners are posing a growing threat to unencumbered reporting State censorship of mainstream media is now passè. No government, at least in our country, has much stomach for it. There is just too much media around, always looking for something to shriek or tweet about. But there is a new beast that the squeamish among...

-The Hindu   Ideological labels are likely to mislead by channelling the debate into issues of capitalism and socialism and detract from the real problem George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Having forgotten the license-permit-quota-raj that enveloped us from 1950 to 1980 and its ‘crony socialism,' many intellectuals, mediapersons and politicians have now discovered ‘crony capitalism.' The license raj consisted of stifling controls imposed on...