-The Telegraph Media-academia partnerships are a necessity Last week, The Conversation US reminded readers that it has turned eight years old.  As notfor-profit media funding grows in India, this site is well worth profiling as a venture to emulate. It is the American edition of a non-profit first launched in Australia as a partnership between universities and journalists funded by universities and foundations. This is a platform that is constantly generating in-depth...

-Down to Earth The Coca-Cola plant that caused over-exploitation of groundwater, toxic contamination of soil, groundwater, loss of agriculture and health in Plachimada shut down 18 years ago Coca-Cola Co, the multi-American beverages giant with presence across the globe, has been in news for its sponsorship of the upcoming 27th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Even as it draws flak for littering the world with...

-The Hindu The government’s fiscal health will be brought into the political discourse with the proposed change, says top Election Commission of India official  The Election Commission of India’s (EC) proposal that political parties disclose the financial ramifications of promises in their manifestos was not linked to the recent debate on freebies, but was aimed at improving the implementation of existing guidelines, a top EC official said on Wednesday. The EC had on...

Contrary to the rising economic distress on the ground since the last few years, the official press release related to the fourth Annual Report on the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) at first glance seems to give a rosy picture about the employment situation in India.  Defined as the percentage of persons unemployed among the persons in the labour force, the unemployment rate in usual status (principal activity status + subsidiary economic activity status)...

-The Hindu With the Union Cabinet approving spelling variations for 11 tribes in the State, the decades-long struggle has drawn to an end Soon after he joined a government job as a teacher in Bastar in 2010, Shivprasad Bhoi, now 39, was asked to get his Scheduled Tribe certificate attested. What he then presumed to be a simple exercise turned out to be a nightmare. A spelling variation in the name of...