A widening corruption scandal that has touched India’s prime minister sent the country’s stock markets down sharply on Friday and threatened to tarnish the country’s image as a rising economic power. Setting off the turmoil was a report from the country’s auditor earlier this week that about $40 billion in wireless spectrum license fees had been squandered by the government’s telecommunications and information technology minister. On Thursday, India’s Supreme Court criticized...
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New Arrivals Strain India’s Cities to Breaking Point by Lydia Polgreen
Mahitosh Sarkar came here from his distant village in West Bengal 12 years ago looking for a better life, and he found it. He abandoned the penniless existence of a subsistence fisherman to become a big-city vegetable seller. His wife found work as a maid. Their four children went to school. Their tiny household, a grim but weather-tight room in a dilapidated tenement, had a color TV and a satellite...
More »‘Radia Media' colloquium raises issues of ethics, privacy
The ethics of journalists involving themselves with corporate lobbyists, questions relating to the authenticity of the Radia tapes, the motives behind the release of the phone recordings, the initial silence of the mainstream media, concerns of privacy, and the role of social and online media were among the issues that came to the fore during a colloquium, ‘Radia Media,' organised by the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ) here on Wednesday. While...
More »2010 on track to being one of three warmest years on record, UN Reports
The year 2010 is almost certain to rank among the three warmest years since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850, with the possibility of topping the chart, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported today. The global combined sea surface and land surface air temperature for January–October is estimated at 0.55 degrees Celsius, plus or minus 0.11 degrees, (0.99 degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus 0.20 degrees) above the...
More »Government hikes pension for Endosulfan victims
The Cabinet on Tuesday decided to raise the pension paid to Endosulfan victims who are unable to perform any form of wage labour from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 2,000 a month. Briefing reporters after the weekly Cabinet meeting here on Tuesday, Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said the other Endosulfan victims would be paid Rs.1,000 as pension. The pension would be made available to the victims through the Social Security Mission under...
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