-The Hindu   If some communities have been denied the benefits of development on grounds of religion, this development is anti-secular, argues Rajeev Bhargava, political theorist Arch rivals the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party continue to trade accusations against each other of playing the communal card in the campaign to the general elections. These are classic instances of the confusion over what secularism is in India. Restoring clarity on the conceptual aspects...

-The United Nations While technological progress and innovative business models have expanded opportunities for freedom expression, they have also allowed for new threats to emerge in the form of Internet censorship, filtering, blocking, and surveillance, warns the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Freedom of expression is essential to dignity, dialogue, democracy and sustainable development," said UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, appealing for renewed commitment to support press freedom at the...

-The Hindu Bangalore: The former Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar on Monday defended in the Legislative Assembly the announcement on supplying rice at Re.1 a kg to the Below Poverty Line families. Participating in the debate on the motion for thanking Governor H.R. Bhardwaj for his address to the members of both the Houses of the State legislature, he termed the "negative reaction" by the media as "inhuman." He said that the...

-The Hindu   As TRAI prepares to regulate ownership of news organisations to ensure Pluralism, big media houses fear shrinking profits and state control by proxy Rahul Khullar, the straight-talking chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), listened attentively to the senior management executive of Bennett Coleman and Co. Limited, one of India's largest media conglomerates. The latter disagreed with the premise of the discussion - that there was a "problem,"...

-IANS India also gets high scores for electoral process and Pluralism (9.58) and civil liberties (9.41) Washington: Even as it acknowledges India as the world's most populous democracy, the Economist magazine's Index of Democracy 2012 ranks India 38th among 165 nations with an overall score of 7.52. India also gets high scores for electoral process and Pluralism (9.58) and civil liberties (9.41). The top three positions go to Norway (9.93) Sweden (9.73) and...