-The Hindu With the era of cheap, bountiful water having been replaced by increasing supply-and-quality constraints, many international investors are beginning to view water as the new oil There is a popular, tongue-in-cheek saying in America - attributed to the writer Mark Twain, who lived through the early phase of the California Water Wars - that "whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over." It highlights the consequences, even if...

-The Hindu India's long-standing legacies of caste, gender and class antagonism replicate on campuses as well. As higher education moves forward, it does so on these social cleavages The brutal sexual attack on a young woman in Delhi, in 2012, and a savage attack on a girl student of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on its campus this year are just two examples of extreme violence that have shocked the nation. Acts of...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The Manmohan Singh government's target of skilling 500 million people by 2022 is grossly inflated and is based on a speech by late management guru CK Prahalad instead of any demographic analysis. The country would actually need only about half that number of trained manpower by then, the government's own think-tank, the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR), has said in a research paper. The IAMR, housed under...

-The Hindu Official rehabilitation process stalled as many families lack proper papers Over 30,000 inmates have left relief camps of their own accord to return to the districts of Kokrajhar, Dhubri and Chirang over the past five days. The Bodoland Territorial Council objected to the Assam government’s ‘pro-forma’ list of displaced families that do not possess land documents even as it rejected land documents of around 13,000 displaced families whose papers were...

-Outlook A labour survey underway in Bihar has indicated that outflow of labourers from the state in search of livelihood has further gone down from earlier estimates of 30 per cent on account of development works being carried out in the state. Preliminary reports emanating from the survey suggests a drastic arrest in exodus of workers mainly from districts like Saharsa, Madhubani, Katihar and Purnea in the state. These areas had earlier witnessed...