-BiharDays.com If familiar with Indian politics and society, here is an IQ test for you. This is what Nandy said during a panel discussion as transcribed from a video clip doing the rounds in the media. Read it as carelessly as you wish and see if you can get the sarcasm. I bet you will, unless you are a towering intellectual or a star media analyst-panelist-commentator. Here it goes: ‘It is a fact...

-The Hindu Confessions by politicians to EC belie claims of innocence by top newspapers The political class is more honest than the media when it comes to ‘paid news’ during elections, judging by the fact that several poll candidates have owned up to this corrupt practice. At least, after the Election Commission and the Press Council of India shot off notices to them and held inquiries into the matter. They have acknowledged...

-Frontline While the broadcast media often arrogates to itself the right to speak in the name of the nation, catering to their “customers” in the process, intellectuals have a duty to question such practices and resist being co-opted by the channels. It may not be far-fetched to speak in terms of a new “mediacracy” riding the airwaves. The movers and shakers perched on the prime time news shows on television seem,...

-Outlook Railways is mulling linking of train tickets with Aadhar cards to tackle the menace of touts in bookings. "We are exploring the possibility of linking Aadhar system with issuing of train tickets and if this happens, the tout menace will be effectively curbed in ticketing system," Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said here today. Passengers often do not get tickets in advance as bulk tickets are being cornered by touts. "I have recently...

-Open Democracy Were Ram Singh and his cohort simply claiming a notion of masculinity promoted every day by their role models in politics, business and the media? Ruchira Gupta writes of the steady creeping of a rape culture into the fabric of India, and what needs to be done to counter the idea that women are commodities Let us talk about Ram Singh, the chief rapist accused in the case of Damini,...