Dear Reader,
Last week, on April 6, the Centre notified the IT Amendment Rules, 2023, which has serious implications and a chilling effect on media freedom in India.
MediaNama analyses the amendment which grants the government omnibus powers to decide what constitutes facts or fake news, through its own fact-checking mechanism, and empowers it to order social media platforms, internet providers and intermediaries to remove content that government considers “fake”, “false” or “misleading”. This is in clear violation, the story points out, of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Shreya Singhal case in 2013 which laid down strict procedures for blocking content.
The Northeast of India, once saddled with insurgency, ethnic conflicts and neglect is witnessing a newfound love – a rash of quality scholarship on the seven states – on its culture, its history and ecology. ThePrint reports from the Northeast on how this buzz and burst of academic energy has even the premier academic institutions interested, including the likes of Harvard University and the IITs.
The debate on how to deal with ‘Arikomban’, the rogue elephant who has been creating havoc in the Chinnakanal region, in the Idukki district of Kerala, has been raging. The Kerala High Court has intervened to order the relocation of the elephant to the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve. Keraleeyam Masika travels to ground zero to find out why the area has been a frequent battleground between humans and animals.
And, The Probe investigates the shocking state of affairs in the MCD schools in Delhi, where the institutions themselves constitute a "critical risk to children". This utter neglect of the schools and shirking of responsibility is all the more unfortunate as the children are from marginalised communities and the parents usually do not have the strength to hold the school administration accountable.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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