-The Telegraph The human resource development ministry plans to sponsor a certain number of Indian students for PhD and MPhil courses in leading foreign universities every year. It has asked higher education regulator University Grants Commission (UGC) to work out details such as the number of students to be sponsored and the institutions with which the arrangement would be sought. “The focus may be on science and technology,” a ministry source said. The...

-Al Jazeera  Organic farming is the "only way to produce food" without harming the planet and people's health. Reports trying to create doubts about organic agriculture are suddenly flooding the media. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, people are fed up of the corporate assault of toxics and GMOs. Secondly, people are turning to organic agriculture and organic food as a way to end the toxic war against the earth and...

-Live Mint The Sonia Gandhi -led National Advisory Council (NAC) may be moving closer to formulating a pre-legislative process that will involve a thorough, time-bound discussion of Bills before they become law. “The need for such a policy of consultation is necessary to evolve from a representative democracy to a participatory, deliberative democracy, particularly for accountability to the people in the formulation of law and policy,” said the draft recommendation of NAC’s working...

Between 2009 and February 2011, at least 14 people were charged with sedition in India London: The typical citizen could be forgiven for fearing that the world’s largest democracy is hurtling towards George Orwell’s 1984 rather than 2013. In late August the government’s department of telecommunications, citing the “communal tensions” around Assam, blocked more than 300 individual web addresses, including the Twitter profile pages of some journalists. It also ordered a limit...

-The Hindu A Planning Commission draft document has made proposals that fail to reflect the case for expanding and improving public-funded medical services and reining in private operators In the health sector, the buzz these days is all about Universal Health Care (UHC). While health activists see in it potential to ensure access to quality health care for common citizens, commercial bodies seem to be eyeing the huge scope for profit from...