Move to form body with 50 governments to oversee Internet governance The raging controversy over excessive state regulation of the Internet based on the IT Rules 2011 is now likely to be dwarfed by discussions in Geneva later this week on India's proposal to the United Nations General Assembly for government control of the Internet. Led by the Commission on Science and Technology for Development, the Geneva meet is a multi-stakeholder discussion...

-The Business Standard India's politicians' regrettable response to a 1949 cartoon On Friday, more clearly than ever before, India’s political class revealed its deepest, darkest fear: that someone, somewhere, is smiling. In an enviable feat of cross-party unanimity in this partisan and divided age, India’s parliamentarians decided that a cartoon by that unparalleled chronicler of the birth of independent India, Shankar, was too offensive for a government-sanctioned textbook on modern Indian...

-PTI Resurrecting the issue of cartoons lampooning her sent by email by a Jadavapur University professor, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday claimed it actually contained a message threatening to assassinate her. She also alleged a conspiracy through Facebook, Twitter and SMS and said "I am being shown in Facebook. Now, it is my turn. I will show you Facebook". "Mamata Banerjee is not a cartoon. A section of the media called...

Alarmed by its proactive role, the three ‘pillars’ of our democracy set out to weaken the fourth estate Fundamentalisms do not necessarily announce their arrival by banging a hammer on our heads. Freedoms are often lost in little steps. The process creeps in quietly but insidiously. The path is often complex and defies a simple narrative. But here’s a straightforward fact: a concerted attempt is being made to censor, control...

-The Telegraph Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal has invited a group of students from the Northeast to discuss the problems they face while studying in other cities. Coordinators of the Justice for Richard Loitam Facebook campaign told this correspondent that the Union minister has invited Monika Khangembam, a Manipuri student in Bangalore, to be a member of the group of students from the region. She had coordinated the Facebook campaign, which...