Disability rights groups are up in arms against a Bill proposing an amendment to the Copyright Act, 1952, that prevents non-governmental organisations, educational institutions and persons with disabilities from converting reading material including textbooks and reference material into audio, digital and other formats that can be used by differently-abled persons. The amendment Bill, introduced in the Rajya Sabha this week, if passed in its current form, will prevent over 70 million...

The PDS in Orissa does not stand for public distribution system, rather, a `perpetual dishonesty structure’ orchestrated by the Government agencies with politicians as bandleader. This is the impression of the recently submitted report of the Justice Wadhwa Committee appointed by the Apex Court to look into the functioning of PDS in Orissa. A clinical inquiry by the committee reveals how murky the system is. The malady afflicts right from the identification of...

The Kolkata Group is an independent initiative inspired and chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. Once a year, it brings together participants drawn from various fields to explore the many inter-connections between inequality, deprivation, human development, and democracy. Its special focus has been on examining ways of advancing people’s health and education. The organisations supporting the Kolkata Group are UNICEF India, Professor Sen’s Pratichi Trust, and the Harvard-based Global...

The novelist and critic, C.S. Lewis, said he had no time for those who thought that since they had read a book once, they had no need to read it again. The great works of literature were to read again and again. The urge to go back to a book was prompted sometimes by aesthetics, the desire to savour once more its artful or elegant prose; and, at other times,...

The melting of Himalayan glaciers has been a bone of contention between international environmentalists and the Government of India. The government believes that some perceptions of the international environmentalists are alarmist. Now a new global report has sought to set aside that controversy by measuring the rate at which the Himalayan glaciers are melting. (The report enclosed below) The Himalayan glaciers are melting faster than the global average and the rate...