Between 2009 and February 2011, at least 14 people were charged with sedition in India London: The typical citizen could be forgiven for fearing that the world’s largest democracy is hurtling towards George Orwell’s 1984 rather than 2013. In late August the government’s department of telecommunications, citing the “communal tensions” around Assam, blocked more than 300 individual web addresses, including the Twitter profile pages of some journalists. It also ordered a limit...

-The Telegraph An NCERT survey has found children from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes lagging behind in education at the primary School level amid a national debate on reservation in promotions for them. The National Achievement Survey, conducted to evaluate the learning achievement of Class V students, found SC/ST students underperforming compared to general students (see chart). Over a lakh students from 6,602 Schools in 27 states and four Union Territories were...

-The Economic Times The Centre has asked states to introduce millets in mid-day meal schemes in Schools to boost demand for the nutritious grain, but experts say the move would also ease pressure on food stocks as rice output is expected to decline this year and the food security legislation would require an additional 63 million tonnes of grain. The government expects a 9% fall in this year's output of rice,...

-The Telegraph India’s research output measured through its scientific papers has improved over the past decade but four in 10 research papers by Indian scientists remain uncited, a report has said. The first government-commissioned independent analysis of research by Indian scientists has found that the country’s share of world research output has modestly increased from 3.1 per cent in 2007 to 3.7 per cent in 2011. The analysis by Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property...

-The Hindu The draft law on acquisition strikes a balance between development and justice for those who will be displaced in the process India is a rapidly industrialising economy and society with intense demands for better infrastructure from its people. The last 20 years have seen a great acceleration in this process, with India becoming one of the world’s fastest growing economies. However, for those whose lands were acquired for these purposes...