-The Times of India JAIPUR: A village panchayat in Jhunjhunu district's Udaipurwati area has banned girls below the age of 18 years from using mobile phones in the village. The panchayat has also issued an order that girls should wear stoles while going out of their homes. The orders have been issued by the Kishorpura village panchayat. According to the panchayat members, these orders were issued so that girls are not "spoiled"...

-Outlook Why free mobiles to BPL folks is a bad idea  “Here you don’t have money to provide them food, and you are thinking of giving them phones,” scoffs a minister in the UPA government, obviously off the record. His comment mirrors the general negative reaction to the ‘Har Haath Mein Phone’ scheme mooted by the Planning Commission, which aims to provide a free mobile phone to each below the poverty line...

-The Indian Express The exodus to the Northeast, perhaps the biggest mass displacement in peacetime, reads like the dark side of the Arab Spring or the reverse of a flash mob. The social and SMS media, which accumulate forces for positive change, were leveraged to spread rumours and disperse minorities by the fictitious threat of violence. And the response is totally inadequate. Social media shifted the balance of power from governments and...

-The Times of India The number of students enrolling for higher education appears to have shot up dramatically. According to a recent survey done by the HRD ministry, the gross enrolment ratio (GER) for higher education has shot up from 12.4 to 20.2. Disclosing this on Monday at a conference titled, EducatioNext, organized by The Times of India, HRD minister Kapil Sibal said that the figure for India had been hovering at...

-The Hindustan Times The country is once again dangerously adrift in a stormy sea of competitive hate politics. The signs are both ominous and familiar — the systematic creation of hatred against people because of their ethnicity or religion; rumours and hate propaganda choking the internet; the public moral justification of violence against targeted communities on grounds of ‘larger’ alleged wrongs; and weak-kneed State action against people and organisations which preach...