-The Hindu Business Line Promises to do for data what PCOs did for voice calls decades ago Mumbai: Gone are the days when consumers would walk miles to get to a Public Call Office (PCO) booth to make telephone calls. With mobile telephony covering every corner of the country, an affordable conversation is now only a button away, and the PCO box has all but disappeared. Now, with huge demand for internet services,...

-The Hindu Dockless bicycle-sharing attracts residents who live in apartment blocks spread across several acres Bengaluru: Until recently, Rohan Kapoor, a Class XI student staying in Adarsh Palm Retreat on Outer Ring Road (ORR) in Bengaluru, had to be picked up and dropped at the exit gate within his own apartment complex. That was because the gate is 2.5 km away from home. Now, he uses his phone to unlock one of the...

-The Hindu Business Line An analysis of how agri concerns will play out in four poll-bound States this year has some key takeaways for politicians ‘Rural distress’ became the major economic narrative to interpret the recent Assembly elections results for Gujarat, specifically the fact that rural support for the incumbent government was considerably less than the support from cities. The woes of the rural sector could be a bigger issue this year. Of...

-The Hindu A Supreme Court Bench will decide whether the law has to be interpreted expansively or in a narrow sense In July 2011, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government embarked on an ambitious project to rewrite the law on land acquisition. How the government acquired land from private parties had long been the subject of heated dispute, often resulting in violent conflict. Several previous governments had made attempts to amend the Land...

-Hindustan Times A newer generation of politicians has again voiced the demand of giving land to landless Dalit households as a means to resolve the crisis of rural livelihoods. But the relentless pursuit of neo-liberal economic policies and liberalisation has rendered most of these demands Utopian Seven decades after Independence, while a majority of farmers cultivate their own land (however small their holdings may be), most Dalit farmers in much of India...