-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 The government has come good on its promise to put in place a food security architecture but the manner in which it has pushed through the historic measure, which gives roughly 67 per cent of the population a legal right over cheap food grains, suggests it was done with an eye on the 2014 general election. The ordinance route is an extraordinary move, considered legitimate only in situations of...

-The Times of India The Parliament's monsoon session is only about a month away. That the Union cabinet has yet taken the ordinance route to implement the national food security Bill signals the scam-tainted UPA government's desperation to woo voters before the next general elections. But the hope that expanding what is already one of the world's largest food security programmes will boost political fortunes is hallucinatory. The exchequer is already...

-The Hindu     Ignou's dual talk leaves students in the lurch Nobody would have thought that in less than two years of setting up of the first Indian Sign Language Research & Training Centre (ISLRTC) for the hearing-impaired, plans would be afoot to shut it down. But that is what seems to be happening at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) campus here. Vice-Chancellor M. Aslam categorically told The Hindu that there was...

-The Hindu Deputy Commissioner asks officials to redouble efforts against illegal activities Gulbarga: Deputy Commissioner N.S. Prasanna Kumar on Wednesday reaffirmed that there would not be any let-up in the crackdown against illegal extraction and hoarding of sand and the district officials have been asked to redouble their efforts to put down such illegal activities. Talking to presspersons here, Mr. Prasanna Kumar said that 350 truckloads of sand illegally hoarded in open spaces...