-The Business Standard No movement yet on quality control in higher education The state of professional higher education in India is abysmal. Consider engineering. All told, there are 1.5 million engineering seats in the country. Almost a third of these are unfilled, so about a million engineers are produced every year. Yet, barely 10 per cent of them are readily employable. About a quarter don’t know enough English to make sense...

-Pratirodh Bureau Activists led by Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar have alleged that the much awaited Land Acquisition Bill was actually a "diluted version" of the Standing Committee's recommended bill.   The activists under belonging to various groups, including National Alliance of People’s Movements, National Forum of Forest people and Forest Workers, Kisan Sangharsh Samiti and Sangharsh claimed that the "positive" position taken by the Standing Committee had been diluted by the...

-The Asian Age Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is exploring the possibility of land reforms even as he has been slammed by activists for not having convened a single meeting of the National Council for Land Reforms (NCLR) headed by him since its formation in 2008. Dr Singh has directed the Planning Commission to set up a meeting with one of the key National Council for Land Reforms members P.V. Rajagopal, who...

-The Friday Times How are demographics changing in Assam and Bengal? And what does this mean for 'indigenous' communities? Garga Chatterjee considers the argument for territorial purity The Assam state of the Indian Union has seen violence flare up suddenly from July 6th. With more than 40 people reported dead and upwards of one and a half lakh displaced in a week, the Kokrajhar riots between Bodos and Muslims have again brought...

-The Times of India Neeraj Banerjee and his family are regular visitors to Nainital. This June, too, the Delhi-based computer engineer made a trip to what he calls his family's favourite tourist spot, nestling in the Kumaon hills at almost 2,000m above sea level. However, Banerjee says all they talked about this time was water — the paucity of it. "With summers being particularly harsh this year, things looked like they...