-The Telegraph The police as the arbiters of communication For a country with serious challenges to tackle, the amount of time and energy of government agencies and courts that is now spent on offence-taking and conspiracy-chasing borders on the ludicrous. Through 2021, the police in various parts of the country sought to criminalize news gathering as well as social media expressions, registering first information reports indiscriminately under various sections of the Criminal...

-Factly.in In our first story on ‘hate speech’ cases, it was observed that the number of cases Booked under Sections 153A & 153AA has been increasing over the years. While the cases have increased, the disposal rates of both the police & courts have come down leading to increased pendency. Even in cases whose trial is complete between 2016 & 2020, the conviction rate was only around 20%.  In the previous story,...

-TheCitizen.in About once in every generation an event occurs which is so tectonic in its scope and intensity that it cries out to be chronicled for posterity. Not merely recorded or reported by news media and television channels, for that is merely transient journalism conveying statistics, allegations and denials. It does not convey the pathos and sufferings of millions, the shattering of dreams and lives; it concerns itself with the body...

-NDTV.com Over 32 lakh are registered as unemployed in Madhya Pradesh even though around 1 lakh government jobs are lying vacant. Bhopal: Fifteen job openings for peons, drivers and watchmen in Madhya Pradesh's Gwalior saw nearly 11,000 unemployed young men flock to the city on Saturday and Sunday not just from within the state but also neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. Although the jobs needed candidates who had cleared the 10th-grade exams, applicants included graduates,...

-TheWire.in Supriya RoyChowdhury's 'City of Shadows' is a compelling study of the lives of the poor in a rapidly globalising Bengaluru. The long caravans of workers leaving the cities for their villages during the national lockdown in 2020 made visible the large proportion of urban workers whose homes are in the villages. Combined with the farmers’ protests, they brought attention to the crisis in agriculture and the failure of agrarian livelihoods that...