-The Indian Express Apar Gupta writes: The substance of many of the requirements were never put to public consultation or deliberation by experts. This is particularly the case for the regulations for online news portals and video streaming platforms. In the polarised environment that we now inhabit, there are few public agreements. One of these rare instances is an agreement that social media is broken. For many commentators, this is an area...

-Counterview.net Speaking at the western region consultation on the Right to Information (RTI) Act, whose two-day virtual session began on Thursday, Aruna Roy, formerly a member of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi-sponsored national advisory panel, has said that governments should recognise RTI has emerged as common citizens’ right to seek answers from authorities instead of seeing RTI pleas with suspicion. A pioneer of the RTI movement in India, Roy objecting to recent orders...

Large dams that cause environmental degradation and large-scale displacement, among other things, have been opposed in India by civil society organisations (CSOs), such as Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), National Alliance of People's Movement (NAPM) and People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). A recently published study by the United Nations University's Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health along with other partner organisations reveals that tens of thousands of existing large...

-TheWire.in The most important concern is that of increasing public spending. There are really only two numbers to look out for in the forthcoming budget: how much did the government claim to have spent in 2020-21, and how much does it intend to spend in 2021-22. These two numbers will determine whether there is any real hope of sustained macroeconomic recovery in the near future, notwithstanding any claims of green shoots or revival...

-TheWire.in The Centre claimed in the Supreme Court that efforts had been made to speak to stakeholders before the laws were passed. Why, then, does the agricultural ministry have no record of these efforts? New Delhi: In an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court on Monday, the Centre claimed that “serious, sincere and constructive efforts [were] made by the Central Government to engage with the limited number of protesting farmers who are...