Bollywood has now been blamed for fuelling India's love for alcohol. Alcohol use in Bollywood movies is directly influencing the drinking habits of India's adolescents, according to a new study presented on Friday at the World Congress of Cardiology in Dubai. Overall 10% of the students (aged between 12-16 years) surveyed in the study had already tried alcohol. But students that had been most exposed to alcohol use in Bollywood movies...

-The Hindustan Times Democracy is in peril in West Bengal, Partha Sarothi Ray alleged within hours of walking free from jail on Wednesday, after a number of intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his release. Ray was arrested on April 8 for participating in a sit-in demonstration protesting the eviction of about 200 families from Nonadanga by the Mamata Banerjee administration. He was granted bail on Wednesday, after...

-The Times of India The Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) is upbeat about fish and foodgrain production during the 12th Five Year Plan (FYP) period. While the current fish production - marine and inland is about 12 million tonnes and foodgrain production touched 250 million tonnes in last fiscal, ICAR's projection for fish production in 2017, when 12th FYP ends is 15-16 million tonnes. Foodgrain production target of the nation...

-The Hindustan Times Dalit students’ assertion of the right to eat beef — a tradition in Andhra Pradesh — triggered a riot with the right wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists at Osmania University in Hyderabad on Sunday. Even after the overnight clash that left five persons injured and two vehicles torched was brought under control, the campus — a hotbed of the Telangana statehood movement — remained tense on Monday. The...

When universities start censoring speech and banning books, and permission is needed to hold conferences, we risk becoming a hollow, illiberal democracy. Do you need the administration's prior permission to hold a meeting, seminar, symposium or conference at a university? Most academics in liberal democracies would either be astounded by the question or feel compelled to answer it with an emphatic, if not vehement, no. The administration, they would argue, should...