-The Indian Express The politics of what these figures could mean or what they could be 'spun' to mean is something to ponder. As far as demographers go, Census 2011 brings good news on the population stabilisation front. And now we know that even across religions, across all communities, there is a decline in population growth rates. Alok Vajpeyi, of the Population Foundation of India who has studied the Data in...

-TheWire.in How most newspapers missed the real story behind the census Data on religion New Delhi: The Muslim population is going up while the population of Hindus is going down. This seems to be the message being spread by the bulk of news reports on the ‘population by religious community’ Data released by the Census of India on August 25. However, a deeper analysis of the Data makes it clear that the population...

The Digital India Mission, launched by the NDA government, aims to connect 2.5 lakh village panchayats with high speed broadband internet by December, 2016 so that citizens can access online services. However, available facts reveal that this is a difficult task to be accomplished. In rural areas, among the youth aged 14-29 about 82 percent do not know how to operate a computer. In urban areas, nearly 51 percent of youth...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Militant guns routinely draw blood here. Ceasefires have been called and aborted. But the troubled Northeast is still the safest for two vulnerable sections - women and children. So says the National Crime Records Bureau in its report for the year 2014. Women, according to the report, are far more safe here than they are in, say, Bengal or Uttar Pradesh. Except Assam, which contributed to more than five per...

-Business Standard Indian farming is labour intensive as mechanization is expensive. This model might change it while keeping the cost very low. The single biggest challenge in farming is debt. A large share of farmers’ insurmountable debt burden comes from purchase of farm equipment. Mechanized farming results in higher productivity but is notoriously capital intensive. A 40 HP tractor with 2 basic implements (a rotavator and a cultivator) and a trolley costs...