-Live Mint India, with its myriad ethnic and religious groups, has more legal speech restrictions than other democratic nations Freedom of speech is impossible to agree about. While hardly anyone will dispute that freedom of expression is essential for a democratic society and an effective free market, almost no one will be able to agree about exactly where to draw the line. In one corner, fighting for unbridled expression in various degrees, you...

-The Hindu An anthology of independent evaluations of MGNREGA shows that it has provided income security, improved health, narrowed the gender gap and created useful assets   In the midst of the debates that prevail in this country over the feasibility of the world’s largest public works programme, the MGNREGA Sameeksha — an anthology of independent research studies and analysis on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, from 2006-2012 — is...

-The Indian Express The exodus to the Northeast, perhaps the biggest mass displacement in peacetime, reads like the dark side of the Arab Spring or the reverse of a flash mob. The social and SMS media, which accumulate forces for positive change, were leveraged to spread rumours and disperse minorities by the fictitious threat of violence. And the response is totally inadequate. Social media shifted the balance of power from governments and...

Recent debates on Internet censorship in India have focused to the allegedly free-for-all nature of the internet. Those of us who have argued against internet censorship have been somewhat misrepresented as arguing for absolute freedom whereby the reasonable restrictions laid down in Article 19 (A) of the Constitution of India don’t apply. Nothing could be farther than the truth. It has been said that the internet can be used to incite...

Meena Kandasamy, one of Chennai’s well-known activists and poets, was recently in Hyderabad delivering a few lectures at NALSAR and other institutions about Ambedkar, when she heard about a beef festival at Osmania University being organised by the Telengana Students’ Association and the Progressive Students Union. Several students and teachers had gathered to support the event organised by the dalit students and also as a symbol of admonishing cultural oppression from...