-The Deccan Chronicle Army units are currently undergoing jungle warfare TRAIning in naxal-affected Chhattisgarh, even as the Union government’s policy of not deploying the Army for anti-naxal operations anywhere in the country still remains in place. The jungle warfare TRAIning is currently on at the Narainpur Manoeuvre Range in South Chhattisgarh. In recent years, the Army has been boosting its presence in Chhattisgarh through plans — approved earlier by the Union...

The suspended Gujarat cadre IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt has requested President Pratibha Patil to direct the Central government to set up a two-member inquiry commission to inquire into the role and conduct of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other Ministers and the adequacy of the administrative measures taken to deal with the aftermath of the Godhra TRAIn carnage in the State in 2002. In a letter to Ms. Patil released...

-DNA The formation of School Management Committee (SMC) in the primary schools under the Right to Education Act (RTE) is a good idea but lack of any guidance for selection of the members of the committee has raised curiosity among educationists. Such committees are to be formed in 34,000 schools. Educationists working in the field of RTE believe that school authorities include poorly educated parents in the SMC that might not serve...

-The Economic Times One in four posts of government statisticians are lying vacant, the government has told a parliamentary committee. The news comes amidst repeated criticism by analysts of the quality of official government data in recent months. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has told the parliament standing committee on finance that there are about 26% vacancies in the Indian statistical Services and Subordinate Statistical Service. According to the report...

Rudyard Kipling opens his superb novel with the street urchin Kim teasing the son of a wealthy man. Kim kicks Chota Lal, whose father, Lala Dinanath, is worth half-a-million sterling, off the trunnion of the mighty cannon Zam-Zammah. Kipling loved India and wrote that it was the only democratic place in the world. It warms us to read this, but of course this was quite untrue in Kipling’s time and...