-Factchecker.in Valsad, Dang, Dahod, Chotta Udepur (Gujarat): Under a mango tree, a one-minute walk from his house, farmer Kishanbhai Mawi pointed to the government-built, Indian-style squat toilet that he, his wife, 21-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter never used. It was easy to see why. The toilet is a ceramic hole in the ground, without walls, running water or connection to a sewer. It is connected to a cess pit, but that has been...

-Scroll.in The India Spend initiative has found as many as 90% of religious hate crimes since 2009 have occurred after the BJP took power at the Centre in 2014. The election results in Brazil last month came as another troubling reminder of the direction in which an increasing number of countries are careening. In nation after nation, a growing number of people are voting for leaders who stoke hatred against minorities and...

-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...