The building collapse in Uttam Nagar that killed four people last week has again exposed how the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) as well as the state government are mired in large-scale corruption. The major cause of the incident, in which four people were killed, was reportedly the flouting of construction norms by the builder. Officials from MCD told Tehelka on condition of anonymity that the number of illegal buildings goes...

-PTI The Punjab Government on Sunday announced freight subsidy for transportation of potato crop to domestic as well as export markets. Potato growers had on Saturday threatened to throw potatoes on the roads in Jalandhar on December 15 to protest the fall in the crop's price to as low as Rs.1 per kg and the “insensitive” attitude of the State government. Announcing a reprieve to potato growers across the State, Punjab Chief Minister...

-The Hindu   Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, has set off a firestorm of protest by demanding that ‘internet intermediaries' — specifically in this round, four social networking giants, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft, which enable hundreds of millions of individual users to publish and share on the worldwide web — remove inflammatory content as well as other text and images that might “offend Indian sensibilities.” As in...

At a time when the government is willing to pump thousands of crores for the revival of national carrier Air India, the finance ministry has rejected railways' plea for a temporary loan of Rs 2,101 crore to fund its development works.  Turning down the loan request, the ministry has the asked state-run transporter, which is under acute financial stress, to meet its liabilities by raising resources.  Railways made the demand considering negative...

-The Economic and Political Weekly   Media freedom is not restricted by one law but by collusion between economic and political power and big media. The defamation case filed in a Pune court by former Press Council chairman justice P B Sawant has drawn attention to the criminal law of defamation and whether it restricts the freedom of the press. Justice Sawant was awarded Rs 100 crore in exemplary damages in the case...