-The Economist HOW should one judge the lot of women in India, a country that is in many ways progressive, modern, tolerant and yet by turns repressive and hostile? Women hold the highest political positions (the presidency, speaker of parliament, leader of the ruling party, leader of the opposition in parliament, several chief ministers of large states) and in theory they are protected by a variety laws promoting equality. Though development indicators...

As more and more people connect to the web, governments across the world are looking to regulate and control the virtual world. In India too there is a growing debate on whether the web, especially social networking sites, should be regulated or not. In an exclusive article for The Times of India, Vint Cerf, considered one of the fathers of the internet along with Bob Kahn, says the beauty of...

-The Indian Express After retrospective taxes, here comes the retroactive cartoon The no-no cartoon was published in Shankar’s Weekly on August 28, 1949 and reproduced in many Shankar collections, including one with a Nehru quote as title that will make his party men squirm today — “Don’t spare me Shankar”. The Congress government has pulled out the cartoon and the textbook that carried it. The cartoon features Nehru himself, standing behind a...

Alarmed by its proactive role, the three ‘pillars’ of our democracy set out to weaken the fourth estate Fundamentalisms do not necessarily announce their arrival by banging a hammer on our heads. Freedoms are often lost in little steps. The process creeps in quietly but insidiously. The path is often complex and defies a simple narrative. But here’s a straightforward fact: a concerted attempt is being made to censor, control...

New census data on asset ownership among different social groups has shown that a far higher proportion of scheduled castes and higher still of scheduled tribes do not own basic consumer durables like a phone or bicycle as compared to "others". Three states however buck this trend; across caste groupings in Punjab, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the rate of ownership of basic consumer durables is high. In fact, the asset ownership...