Above the Fold: Top stories of the day
1. More than 80 lakh people have been affected by floods across India, with 81 casualties being reported from West Bengal, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Odisha.
2. An all-party meeting has been scheduled today to break through the logjam in Parliament, where the Bharatiya Janata Party is expected to offer a statement from the Prime Minister on the floor of the House.
3. The government has sought parliamentary approval for an additional Rs 20,000 crore on social sectors aimed primarily at schemes like the employment guarantee scheme and the Integrated Child Development Scheme.

The Big Story: Fig Leaf
There is a porn ban. Sort of. Until this morning it was unclear what was happening after a number of the biggest porn sites started disappearing, replaced by a perfunctory screen saying they had been taken down by order of the competent authority. This came despite the Supreme Court saying you can't regulate what happens in an adult's bedroom. Now it turns out the government, according to the Times of India, has asked telecom operators to block 857 pornography sites, claiming through unnamed sources that it is doing so because the apex court expressed concern over the home ministry's failure to block child porn.

The government has been insistent that there is no porn "ban" or a crackdown of any sort. Even the order from the Department of Telecom to the operators was temporary, although this is clearly being seen as a prelude to a more structured way of banning whatever the government considers "indecent" on the internet. This, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has not ordered anything specific done and in oral observations made it clear that one could not regulate what an adult did in the bedroom.

An additional concern is, of course, what a massive waste of time this effort could be. Countries with much more of an interest in prudishness, like Saudi Arabia, spend massive amounts of time, effort and presumably money to keep porn blocked and yet those who go looking for it on the internet can always find some. India, with a massive, open internet, is unlikely to do much but shutter the most popular sites to little effect.

The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest story
Here's how we naive porn-loving Indians can build a better democracy. Everything you wanted to know about how India watches porn in one map and four charts. And here's why we must support Ravi Shankar Prasad in filtering internet porn.

To get Scroll's Daily Fix, a compendium of all you need to know for the day (and a little more) on your phone, download our Android app.

Politicking & Policying
1. India has proposed August 23-24 for the first National Security Advisor-level meet with Pakistan, which comes amid the backdrop of New Delhi claiming that the Gurdaspur attackers were came from across the border.
2. The Supreme Court is considering action against Anup Surendranath, a deputy registrar who resigned from the post the day after the hanging of Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon, because of his involvement in the case while on apex court payrolls.
3. A report produced by the Information & Broadcasting Ministry reveals that other ministries have begun scaling back or withdrawing altogether their funds allocated for spending on Prasar Bharati outlets, like Doordarshan.
4. As Finance Minister Arun Jaitley accused the Congress of damaging the country with its "obstructionist" stance, the latter unleashed charges against the BJP in Himachal Pradesh, claiming a Rs 100 crore loss to the exchequer because of the allotment of land for a cricket stadium.
5. The Maharashtra government is planning restaurants for white-rumped vultures after cameras show chicks of the endangered species starving to death.

Scroll Videos
Could a rap music video about Kodaikanal's mercury disaster do what years of protests have failed to?

Punditry
1. Ashok Gulati in the Indian Express calls on India's policymakers not to fall prey to elitist bias when making agricultural policy.
2. The Goods and Services Tax Bill can be salvaged with simple changes, writes Satya Poddar in the Business Standard.
3. Rahul Tripathi in the Economic Times charts the rise of Shaurya Doval, son of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, and one of the government's most influential advisors.

Don't Miss
Anu Kumar explains how the transfer of wealth from India to Britain began well before the industrial revolution, from the lens of the demand for reparations.
The economic historians Clingingsmith and Williamson (2005) denoted three phases to suggest that deindustrialisation began well before Britain’s industrial revolution: Post-Mughal (1700-50); then the merchant capital period from the 1750s, which saw net transfer of wealth and goods as the East India Company tried to balance trade, and then after the 1850s, when British industrial interests weighed in heavily on policy decisions of the colonial government – a time when modern industryalso had its beginnings in India.