Much like the tsunami waves that devastated many coastal areas five years ago, the closing weeks of 2009 saw an ill wind sweeping across many of our democratic institutions, highlighting that beneath the veneer of the nation’s aspirations towards great power status was a crumbling institutional core. To look at the fourth estate first. The preface to the Press Council of India’s “Norms of Journalistic Conduct” has a section that...

The Supreme Court on Monday said the Right to Information Act would not be used to question the intention of a judge for giving a particular verdict. A judge need not furnish reasons under the RTI on why he chose to give this verdict and not another, noted a Division Bench headed by Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan. “He (a judge) cannot go on explaining his judgments. The...

India may next year witness its first census since Independence that refers to caste, if the Centre accepts a social justice ministry recommendation that could be politically controversial. Officials said the ministry had asked for caste to be included as one of the criteria in the 2011 census, and recommended a differential headcount of the Other Backward Classes and reassessment of their conditions that could lead to changes in the OBC...

Ruchika Girhotra's may be a particularly outrageous example, but things have been getting progressively worse for women in India. Official data shows that crimes against women are rising faster than any other crime. What is worse, investigation of anti-women offences is more tardy than most others. In 2007, the year for which latest data is available from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), seven of the 10 fastest rising crimes...

Five years after the massive Indian Ocean tsunami, which left a devastating trail of death and destruction, millions of people have benefited from the influx of aid by rebuilding stronger infrastructure, social services and disaster warning systems than existed before the catastrophe, according to the United Nations agencies at the core of the recovery effort. The largest emergency relief response in history was prompted by the earthquake off the coast...