-The Hindu The apex court, however, permitted the use of photographs of the President, Prime Minister and CJI in the advertisements. In a historic judgment holding that taxpayers' money cannot be spent to build "personality cults" of political leaders, the Supreme Court on Wednesday restrained ruling parties from publishing photographs of political leaders or prominent persons in government-funded advertisements. The apex court said such photos divert attention from the policy of the government,...

-Outlook Corporate karza maafi reaches new heights, social spending new lows This year's budget write-off in customs duty on gold, diamonds and jewellery (all aam aadmi items, of course) is Rs 75,592 crore. That's well over twice the "record" amount allocated to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. As Prof Jayati Ghosh points out, the MNREGA has given billions of person-days of work to tens of millions of poor...

Established in 1998, Vividha is a woman’s documentation and resource centre. As the women's movement in Rajasthan became more intense and broader based in membership, the need for an information and resource centre became increasingly pressing. Vividha is a collective for critical and creative consultations on women's and other contemporary relevant issues that affect women's lives. It was formed of activists who had been providing assistance with investigations, legal aid,...

-The Hindu Long list of agents against free expression Censorship across the country is on the rise with as many as 52 instances being recorded in the first quarter of 2014. Releasing data on censorship for the first three months of this year, media watch group, The Hoot, said this averaged a little less than one a day. The agents against free expression were not just the state or fringe groups. The...

-The Business Standard A sting, Operation Prime Minister, by a TV news channel had said opinion polls could be manipulated by research agencies The Election Commission (EC) of India cannot ban opinion polls ahead of elections; all it can do is remind the Union government about its long-pending request. And, this is what India's highest poll-conducting body is planning to do, following a TV news channel's sting operation code-named ‘Operation Prime Minister', which...