-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 Hindustan Times A couple of months ago, I was in South Block for a meeting at the ministry of defence. Security norms dictate leaving mobile and electronic devices at the checkpoint. Imagine my horror when I came back an hour later to see one of the guards going through my iPad. This cavalier attitude towards individual privacy is illustrative of an interesting dilemma between the inevitability of a more intrusive...

-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...

-Reuters India has launched a wide-ranging surveillance programme that will give its security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into e-mails and phone calls without oversight by courts or parliament, several sources said. The expanded surveillance in the world's most populous democracy, which the government says will help safeguard national security, has alarmed privacy advocates at a time when allegations of massive US digital snooping beyond American...

-The Hindu Mandya: In a single biggest raid in recent years against the "bonded labour system" in the State, Revenue and Police officials on Thursday raided a stone quarry unit on the outskirts of Bangalore and rescued 19 migrant labourers. Among them nine are minors. The rescued labourers are from Mahbubnagar district in Andhra Pradesh. They alleged that they had been working since past 13 years as bonded labourers at the quarry,...