-Hindustan Times But The Danger of allowing ingress to nationally critical sectors, like telecommunications, to countries that are not friendly must now be a matter of immediate national concern The debate on whether or not to censor information has been going on for centuries. The term ‘censor’ in Roman times originally referred to the function of special magistrates assigned to supervise public morals and, so long as this remained the remit, the...

-The Hindu Hundreds of species of pollinators may be in dangerous decline Across India’s agrarian plains, plantations and orchards, millions of birds, bats and insects toil to pollinate crops. However, many of these thousands of species may be in dangerous decline. In 2015, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that pollinators lead to huge agricultural economic gains. The report estimated pollinator contribution in India to be $0.831-1.5 billion...

-The Telegraph We rank 138th out of 180 countries on press freedom, and among the highest for murders of journalists pending investigation India’s list of dubious distinctions is growing, especially with regard to the fourth estate. If it were not bad enough that the country has steadily been sliding downward each year on the World Press Freedom Index — at present, it ranks 138th out of 180 countries, just one place ahead...

-National Herald Two years after the disastrous demonetisation, the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister—even the fawning media— no longer speak of the ‘Demonetisation Dividend’. There has been none Two years back, on November 8, at around 8.30 pm, the Prime Minister of India, with his characteristic love for drama, unleashed on the country what he had then claimed was the one silver bullet which would eliminate the triple evils of...

-The Indian Express Debate around RBI-government stand-off ignores the structural cause behind India’s economic woes: Interest rates as an instrument cannot achieve multiple, contradictory goals. The stand-off between the Narendra Modi government and the Reserve Bank of India has generated a false discourse on the one hand and an illusion on the other. In this discourse, the RBI’s position, articulated by its deputy governor, is that central bank policy has to be...