-The Hindu Atleast 40 faculty members from the IITs at Mumbai, Delhi, Khargapur and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have, as of Wednesday, signed the petition lambasting Free Basics — a Facebook initiative to offer free Access to a few sites—as ‘misleading’and ‘flawed.’ They will be submitting the petition to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday. “Facebook’s ‘free basics’ (sic) proposal is such a lethal combination, having several...

-The Hindu We need to provide full Internet at prices people can afford, not privilege private platforms. This is where India’s regulatory system has to step in The airwaves, the newspapers and even the online space are now saturated with a Rs. 100 crore campaign proclaiming that Internet connectivity for the Indian poor is a gift from Facebook which a few churlish net neutrality fundamentalists are opposing. In its campaign, Facebook is...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: The Naveen Patnaik government has decided to extend the cheap lunch scheme - Aahar - to all the district headquarters and 16 select urban local bodies from March 1. The government now plans to provide the cheap meals to nearly one lakh people across the state in the first phase, sources said. The move will coincide with the launch of centenary celebrations of Biju Patnaik. Final touches to the plan...

-The Times of India/ The Economic Times Renowned geneticist and administrator M S Swaminathan is popularly known as the 'father of India's green revolution'. Speaking with Srijana Mitra Das, Swaminathan discussed why he fears the WTO Nairobi meet could exacerbate global food insecurity, double standards over farming protection between developed and developing nations, an Indian Single Market in grains - and how India, already suffering 'hidden' famine, must have freedom to...

-Livemint.com With banks and ATMs under water, people were able to draw cash from Aadhaar-enabled micro-ATMs New Delhi: When heavy rains marooned large parts of Tamil Nadu, banking correspondents (BC) armed with Aadhaar-enabled micro-ATMs fanned out to help people retrieve cash from their bank accounts. The flood swept away many belongings including the bank pass book, debit card and other identification documents of S. Sangeetha, 28, who lives in Anumandai village in...