Reports

A circular issued by the Kerala government directing the public education department to deploy online school management software called Sampoorna in schools across the state has drawn flak from civil liberties activists. According to the circular, details of as many as 6 million students spanning over 15,000 schools in the state would be captured in this scheme. All schoolchildren will soon have unique identification numbers (UID), which will help in tracking their movements in educational...

Kashmir’s much-hyped literary festival has been cancelled. The organisers of ‘Harud: The Autumn Literature Festival’, scheduled for September 24-26 in Srinagar, cited the possibility of violence as the main reason behind this decision. The festival secretariat said they were concerned about the possibility of protests and the "heightened" nature of the debate. The debate in question was the incisive criticism that the organisers faced from writers, journalists, filmmakers and artists, among...

Many university students use scholarly databases like they would Google, revealing an astonishingly poor understanding of how to refine searches for better research results, a US study has found. The Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) Project, a two-year study of the student research process involving five US universities, included extensive interviews with students, librarians and other academics in an effort to better understand 21st Century student research habits...

This has taken a long time – but would be more than welcome for people of the Northeast. The government has announced that it will set up separate High Courts for each of the Northeast states. Setting up of separate High Courts would be subject to creation of necessary infrastructural facilities by the respective state governments. Announcing this in the Lok Sabha on Friday, Salman Khursheed, Union Minister for Law and Justice, said that at present the governments of Manipur, Meghalaya and...

Speech of Isak Chishi Swu, Yaruiwo (President) of the Government of the People's Republic of Nagalim (GPRN) on the occasion of the 65th Naga Independence Day celebrations, August 14, 2011. My dear Naga people, Six decades ago on this historic day, the 14th of August 1947, the Naga people took a historic decision to remain as an independent nation and subsequently held a plebiscite in 1951 in affirmation of that decision. Since then the conflict started between the Indian Armed Forces and the...

The attacks carried out between 2005 and 2009 on Indian students studying in Australia should not be construed as an evidence of racism, a study has insisted. The attacks had previously created a diplomatic row between India and Australia. Indians studying in Australia, as well as other foreign students, were “less likely or as likely to be victims of physical assaults and other theft” than Australia’s population in general, a report released by the Canberra-based Australian Institute of...

The Reliance Communications website describes itself as India’s number one network. It certainly isn’t if you consider the number of subscribers it has lost in the first five months since the mobile number portability (MNP) facility was introduced in India – it lost a whopping 1,166,643 net subscribers till June 30. Reliance’s loss is more than double the second company in the dubious rankings – state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), which lost 573,142 subscribers. The third is Tata...

Women from minority and indigenous communities are targeted for rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture and killings specifically because of their ethnic, religious or indigenous identity, Minority Rights Group International says in its 2011 annual report launched last week. In the flagship annual publication, State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2011, MRG documents cases from across the world showing how women from minority and indigenous communities often face...

The Supreme Court of India’s directive to the Chhattisgarh government to disband and disarm 6,500 special police officers (SPOs) engaged in anti-Maoist operations is a slap on the latter’s face. On Tuesday, a Supreme Court bench ordered the Union government “to cease and desist, forthwith, from using any of its funds in supporting, directly or indirectly the recruitment of SPOs for the purposes of engaging in any form of counter-insurgency activities against Maoist/Naxalite groups”. SPOs, also...

India has introduced a new e-waste rule that makes environmentally sound management and disposal of electronic waste mandatory. The E-waste (Management and Handling) Rule, 2011 places responsibility on the producers for the entire lifecycle of a product, from design to disposal. Apart from Extended Producer Responsibility principle, the rule is a significant step towards international standards of Restriction of Hazardous substances in electronics. The rules were notified by the Ministry of...