Brian Lara in Kolkata; Is India's high-rise boom a bane?

Here’s a round up of the big news in today’s newspapers.

The rape of the Dalit woman whose son was suspected of eloping with a higher caste girl found mention on the front page only in The Hindustan Times. As is so often the case, the police initially refused to file an FIR and did so only after pressure. Five persons from the upper caste family were subsequently arrested on charges under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocity) Act.

A DNA article, accompanied by the threatening headline ‘ India China high-rise boom spells Eco Crisis ’, explains the pattern of a link up between the building of skyscrapers and an impending “economic correction.” On India, the article says “non performing loans – a substantial number of them to real estate ventures – grew by nearly a third in the first half of this fiscal”.

The Mumbai Marathon sees each paper projecting a different view of the event. DNA has a story of three young men with disabilities that do not deter them from taking part in the half marathon.

The Hindustan Times has a very informative graphic, including a magnified view of the Senior Citizen’s run . HT has another story of the BMC, who announces “we have given the clearance for the event, but will not carry out any civic work for them” . The Indian Express highlights the disabled runners, clubbing the story with fund-raising efforts. Meera Mehta, a 13 year old, is the youngest person to raise Rs. 1 lakh for charity. The Times of India is the only paper which puts the Marathon on the front page, highlighting the fact that almost 20% of those who run the full Marathon are over 45 ! Their covereage of the Marathon is clearly the best, with almost all of an inside page devoted to the race as well. A 48 year old runner says the marathon ‘is part of people’s bucket list (of things to do) before they die’, perhaps explaining why so many over the age of 45 participate.

Brian Lara was in Kolkata, and only the Times of India (of the Mumbai papers) seems to have known. Lara says Sachin’s ‘century of centuries’ will arrive soon. “It’s only a matter of time now. He’s a legend and just too good not to get it.”

Business Standard writes of the BCCI thwarting Nimbus Communications attempt to sell the company. The paper says that Nimbus was in discussions with MSM and was likely to approach Network18 and Relaince “soon”.

The Mint brings out an intriguing story on the government proposing “a legal provision that puts the onus uniformly on companies such as Skype Technology SA and Google Inc. to locate part of their information technology (IT) infrastructure within the country to enable investigative agencies ready access to encrypted data on their servers”.