-The Indian Express A balanced approach can reduce petrol price without affecting revenues. RBI mustn’t artificially shore up rupee The Brent crude oil price has changed from around $68/barrel in January to $70/barrel on November 9, touching a high of $86 on October 3. The rupee has also fallen from Rs 63.30 per US$ in January to Rs 70 on November 9. These fluctuations have created major policy problems for the...

-The Indian Express The request for information has consistently increased from just eight in the first six months of 2013 to 16,580 in the first half of 2018. While the Government has steadily decreased its requests for content to be taken off Facebook, there has Been a surge in its requests for “information” and “user accounts”. Since 2015, there has Been an estimated 63% increase in Facebook accounts in India and...

-Newsclick.in Of the 136 talukas in Maharashtra, which had demanded that they should be declared ‘drought-hit’, only three were “eligible” to be there in the category, as per 2016 manual. Though the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had declared a month ago that as many as 255 districts of the country have witnessed deficit rainfall of 20 to 59 per cent during the South-West monsoon, many of the states are yet to declare...

-The Telegraph Corruption and traditional attitudes are major reasons why 196 million Indians are chronically undernourished One is what one eats. A study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization confirms that poor-quality diet poses a greater threat to public health across the world than malaria, tuberculosis or measles and that diet-related factors account for six of the top nine ailments on the global burden of disease. This is worrying for...

-The Hindu Business Line Researchers say that environmental problem of groundwater depletion is much more serious than carbon dioxide emissions associated with it New Delhi: Over-extraction of groundwater is a major environmental challenge in many parts of India. It is not only leading to rapid decline in groundwater reserves but also contributing to India’s carbon emissions, a new study has warned. Billions of litres of groundwater pumped out every year contributes to carbon...