-The Telegraph New Delhi: A group of retired bureaucrats have written an open letter ruing the "rising authoritarianism and majoritarianism" that is choking dissent, and urging public authorities to take "corrective action" to "reclaim and defend the spirit of the Constitution". "Argumentation and discussion about different perspectives - the lifeblood not only of institutions of learning but of democracy itself -are being throttled," the letter says. "Disagreement and dissent are considered seditious...

-The Hindu Of the country’s 217 million children, nearly 50% endure multidimensional poverty, says Oxford survey About 31% of the world’s “multidimensionally poor” children live in India, according to a new report by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), a poverty reduction project grounded in economist Amartya Sen’s ‘capability approach’. “In terms of countries, fully 31% of the 689 million poor children live in India, followed by Nigeria (8%), Ethiopia (7%)...

-PTI China's emissions of carbon dioxide appear to have peaked more than 10 years sooner than its government had said they would and India is now expected to obtain 40 per cent of its electricity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2022, eight years ahead of schedule, it noted. New York:  India and China are showing the way forward in the battle against climate change by greatly increasing their investments in renewable...

-Livemint.com Pinarayi Vijayan declared in Kozhikode that Kerala has become the first state in the country to provide electricity to every home Bengaluru: Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan Monday said the state has become the first in the country to provide electricity to every home. The state already had 10% of households in every village electrified, which is the norm to get the title “total electrified” by the central government. But the ruling...

-IndiaSpend/ Business Standard In Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Jharkhand and Bihar, fewer than 50% of rural households have electricity As many as 73% of the 18,452 villages that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government identified for electrification in 2015 now have power supply, but only 8% of these villages had all their households electrified, according to the government’s own data. As of May 25, 2017, 13,523 villages have been electrified, but 100% household connectivity...