-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government is examining proposals from the information technology industry to intensify real-time analysis of social media platforms for keeping tabs on developing events, public mood and impending threats. Sources said senior officials of the National Security Council held a meeting with representatives of software giant Infosys late last month after which a committee was constituted to brief the private company for developing a web application portal that...

-The Indian Express   India's rentier capitalism is an inset in the big picture drawn by Thomas Piketty   French economist Thomas Piketty has written a scholarly tome with the humdrum title, Capital in the 21st Century. The book has become an overnight sensation because Piketty documents an inherent tendency for ever-increasing inequality of income and wealth in capitalist economic systems. It is not an accident, he says, that many will be left behind...

-Live Mint   Building toilets holds the key to reducing India's malnutrition burden Commenting on the Indian elections in his satire show, British humorist John Oliver remarked, "(Narendra) Modi has managed to inspire people with his populist platform including a pledge to put a toilet in every home. That's a bold move, coming out as pro-toilet." Oliver's wisecrack may have deliberately exaggerated Narendra Modi's pitch on toilets but the focus on sanitation has been...

-Economic and Political Weekly     The usual explanations for the divergence between calorie intake and consumption expenditure in India ignore the enormous squeeze on food budgets arising from dispossession (leading to loss of access to common property resources), rising migration (involving a loss of access to non-market food items) and the forced turn to the private sector for social sector services that are more expensive than public sector provision. It is the...

-The Indian Express Manual scavenging laws will need to be supported by better sanitation policies. The recent passage of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill by Parliament is a welcome, long-overdue step in the right direction. The bill replaces the outdated and rarely implemented 1993 law, which purported to abolish manual scavenging. It has been passed primarily due to a sustained campaign by thousands of former women...