-The Tribune LED-equipped vans act as link between party, people Amritsar: Though the political rallies and public meetings are restricted due to the outbreak of the third wave of Covid-19, the political parties are adopting alternative modes for the election campaigns. The Congress party in the Majha belt has hired publicity vans, equipped with LEDs, to propagate its policies. Goods vehicles have been modified to install the LEDs to play political videos. Such vans...

-The Telegraph A Truth Commission for the Northeast This essay is a letter to my fellow Indians. It’s a prayer, a plea, a proposal for a project, a moral experiment. It was triggered by the emptiness of Independence Day, when a majoritarian, mediocre India confronted the vacuity of its political self. These feelings increased upon reading reports on December 4 of the massacre of several civilians in Nagaland. They were waiting at...

-Hindustan Times In the last of its five part series on the pandemic, school shutdowns and its effects on India’s children, HT travelled to Bastar to find that not only could this mean the usual learning loss, or problems with the lack of connectivity, but a deeper, more worrying malaise. Bijapur: There is a main road that runs close by, but the government school in Bhairamgarh is hidden from view. The campus...

-The Telegraph The health ministry, ICMR and DBT said they have not received any share of the Rs 100 crore pledged from the PM CARES Fund The department of biotechnology in the Union science ministry has spent only 13 per cent of the Rs 900 crore earmarked for Covid-19 vaccine development 14 months ago and multiple government departments have not received money for jabs pledged by the Prime Minister’s Office 20 months...

-Financial Express The state desperately needs a strategy for labour-intensive manufacturing; the attacks on cattle-trade have knocked down its once-thriving leather industry In 1955, the share of population below the poverty line (NSS 1955) in Uttar Pradesh was 64%, not too different from that in the Madras State (present-day Tamil Nadu), at 73.6%, or in West Bengal, at 53.6%. Four decades later, in 1993-94, while India’s poverty rate was 45.3%, UP’s was...