-The Hindu While there is reason to be proud of the progress in the production of wheat, rice, cereals and millets, the use of farmland for non-farm purposes is a cause for concern The year 2013 marks the 70th anniversary of the Bengal Famine which resulted in the death of an estimated 1.5 to 3 million children, women and men during 1942-43. A constellation of factors led to this mega-tragedy, such as...

-The Economic Times Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is unhappy with the home ministry for not following routine procedures such as informing the family of Parliament attack convict Mohammad Afzal Guru before his hanging last Saturday, two people familiar with the matter have told ET. The prime minister felt the matter could have been handled better, one of the persons said, adding that he had told the same to Home Minister Sushil Kumar...

-The Telegraph The Centre has rejected a plea for removal of K.G. Balakrishnan as National Human Rights Commission chairperson for alleged assets accumulation when he was Chief Justice of India from January 2007 to June 2010. The Union home ministry said papers relating to Balakrishnan’s alleged corruption had been sent to the Union law ministry “for taking appropriate action”. In a recent letter to Common Cause, an NGO, the home ministry said...

-Deccan Chronicle Anantapur: Lack of skilled manpower and approved operators with tool kits and computer systems has badly hit the Aadhaar enrolment drive in the district. Though the administration had around 350 kits pertaining to the enrolment process, the district administration was unable to set up new centres to complete the process in the scheduled period. Long queues were witnessed ever since the enrolment drive started at 22 centres in the district. Generally,...

-The Hindu Effective spending, reworking the affiliation system and breaking academic bureaucracy are key to better universities Although Indian higher education suffers from many dysfunctionalities and the system overall is characterised by “pinnacles of excellence in a sea of mediocrity”, it does reasonably well by some international comparisons. Here are a few examples: — India is a global leader in terms of GDP spent by public and private sources on higher education. India...