-The Hindu   The government will amend the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, to include registration of marriages under the purview of this law. The amendment bill to be introduced in parliament during this session. This will provide legal protection to couples, especially in cases of inter-religious matrimony. The Union Cabinet on Thursday also approved amendment to the Anand Marriage Act, 1909, to provide for registration of marriages of Sikhs that...

-Express News Service   Having waited almost a year for the government to initiate the process of carrying out electoral reforms, Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi has decided to write to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tomorrow to seek his intervention. “I am writing to the Prime Minister tomorrow reminding him of this long-pending thing (electoral reforms). There is a national consultation on the subject which is also pending,” Quraishi said today during the...

An unnecessary controversy has been started by the release of the poverty estimates of 2009-10 by the planning commission. The controversy, which was entirely avoidable, was allowed to go on because of the poor handling of the issue by the planning commission. It is unfortunate that the planning commission was less than willing to own the Tendulkar committee report which was submitted in December 2009 and accepted by the commission...

-The Times of India   As consumers open up to digital products, their personal data is being valued more and more as an asset. Facebook's looming $100 billion valuation is based on a presumption of having personal information on millions of users, which can be used to target advertising and content towards them. And Google is moving to collect similar information. Globally, the power of data aggregators is raising serious concerns around...

The key issue is not availability or resources but last mile delivery: how to reach foodgrains to people. In ancient Greece, the punishment given to Tantalus was to tie a cup around his neck and fill it with water. Every time he bent to take a sip, the cup would drop further and he would never get a drop into his parched mouth. From this comes the word “tantalizing”. Something like...