-Hindustan Times Many years ago, Jagdish Bhagwati, a very distinguished economist long before he became one of the patron saints of the NDA, published an important paper on what he called Directly Unproductive Activities or DUP. These bore a close relation to what his friend and well-known South Asia scholar, Anne Krueger, had called rent-seeking activities in some slightly earlier work. Both made the important point that the social cost of...

-PTI   Climate change will have a "considerable" impact on the dynamics of the river Ganga, affecting a major portion of north India which is directly dependent on it for its agriculture and industrial needs, a recent study said. In a study conducted by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, on how the stream-flow in the basin would change under the changing "land use pattern" and "climate", it was found...

-The Telegraph Shillong: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) today allowed transportation of coal from Meghalaya while refusing to lift the interim Ban on the mining of the "black diamond". After a series of hearings, the tribunal's principal bench provided partial relief to coal miners by permitting them to pay royalty on the extracted coal within 21 days from today. Transportation of the mineral would carry on until May 31, the bench ruled. "The...

-The Times of India KOLKATA: A potato glut and plunging prices have triggered suicides in Bengal's Hooghly, Burdwan and Bankura districts. Hooghly alone reported six of them. Prices have crashed, one kg of the tuber selling for Rs 3 to Rs 4. With the pressure unlikely to ease in the near future, peasants face an uncertain future and are agitating. In 2013, Bengal's farmers reaped a good harvest of 85 lakh tonnes...

-The Hindu ‘Liberty of speech, expression cardinal concepts of paramount significance in a democracy' Tuesday's verdict is a victory for a loose coalition of young lawyers, Internet activists and researchers who filed separate petitions but helped each other with backroom work and creating public opinion over the last two years. Among the young lawyers who argued the case is Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founding director of the non-profit, Software Legal Centre,...