-The Hindu The acrimony between the government and the opposition has worsened to such an extent that it has subverted attempts to reach workable solutions to practical problems The French sociologist and columnist Raymond Aron had pointed out that in English, there are two different terms, “politics” and “policy” whereas in his own language there is only one single term, “La politique,” to cover both. It is the same in German as...

-The Hindu A schoolgirl, accused of being talkative in the class, was forced to stand for over five hours outside the classroom after her lips were sealed with an adhesive tape, in a private school in the Noorkhan Bazar locality of Old City here on Wednesday. Syeda Sadar Fatima, studying in Class 9 at Sam British School, rushed home weeping and reported the matter to her parents. Her father Syed Mujtaba Hussain...

PATIALA/SANGRUR: Everyone agrees that theNREGA is causing a shortage of agricultural labour. Everyone, that is, except the workers themselves. For the last two years, the "success" of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (commonly referred to as NREGA) in reducing the number of men migrating out of India's pooRest states has become something of a truism. In Punjab, this has resulted in dozens of news articles about the shortage...

-The Business Standard When the anti-Posco brigade celebrated the seventh anniversary of their agitation against the mega steel venture of the South Korean behemoth at Dhinkia near Paradip in Odisha last week, the noise they made against the project was drowned by the murmurs of a split in their ranks. After fighting against the project for the last seven years, Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) seems to be disintegrating, with many of...

The oil marketing companies are likely to slash the petrol prices by up to Rs. 4 a litre from July 1. The trigger: The steep fall in global prices of crude oil as well as petrol on which the companies base the domestic prices every fortnight. The price cut will come as a big respite for the consumer after the recent increase of Rs. 7.54 a litre on May 23...