-The Indian Express The exodus to the Northeast, perhaps the biggest mass displacement in peacetime, reads like the dark side of the Arab Spring or the reverse of a flash mob. The social and SMS media, which accumulate forces for positive change, were leveraged to spread rumours and disperse minorities by the fictitious threat of violence. And the response is totally inadequate. Social media shifted the balance of power from governments and...

-The Economic Times Drug companies paid as little as 50,000 as compensation to families of volunteers who died during clinical trials for new medicines last year, leading to sharp criticism about the paltry sums being handed out and growing clamour among health groups for more stringent guidelines on new drug trials.  According to government data accessed by a healthcare activist through an RTI query, Germany's Fresenius Kabi paid 50,000 each to the...

-The Economic Times The three reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on coal, ultra-mega power projects and airports, playing out in the public discourse as major indictments of corruption and of the government, serve only to spread confusion and convert infrastructure building into a political battleground. The reports are ill-informed by commercial logic, sometimes deficient in factual detail. However, since they bear the authority of a constitutional body, the...

-The Hindu Houses belonging to weavers’ community were torched on June 23 A row of kuccha and pucca houses lie in a rubble of mud, stone and bricks. Those that stand have blackened walls, dismantled roofs and half-doors. Some have no doors. Ashes of hay and grains are strewn outside the granaries. The local mosque looks desolate; its gate is oddly locked. An eerie sense of calm surrounds the place. This is the...

-The Hindu A retelling of Rabindranath Tagore’s celebrated play Muktadhaara, often interpreted as Tagore’s nationalist critique of colonial exploitation, came under fire from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s culture police on Saturday evening here. Tamasha Naa Hua, directed by noted director Bhanu Bharti, was staged at the city’s famous Bharat Bhawan cultural centre as part of the Rangmandal theatre festival on Saturday evening. Muktadhaara considered one of Tagore’s finest plays is about the...