-The Indian Express Article 32 affirms the right to move the Supreme Court if a fundamental right is violated. How does this provision of the Constitution define this right, and how has the SC interpreted it over the years? On Monday, a Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice of India S A Bobde observed that it is “trying to discourage” individuals from filing petitions under Article 32 of the Constitution. The...

-The Indian Express Highest court does well to underline what it should do. Hopefully, it listens to itself — and stands up for a stand-up comedian. Granting interim bail within a day to Arnab Goswami in a 2018 suicide abetment case, Supreme Court Justice DY Chandrachud correctly described the responsibility of the apex court: “Forget Arnab Goswami for a moment, we are a constitutional court… If we as a constitutional court do...

-The Indian Express A collective of NREGA women activists discovers its political voice. As Jean Dreze recently observed, one of the key ideas behind NREGA was that it would serve as a platform for increasing the overall political capacities of workers. It was hoped that people would organise themselves to collectively demand work and, in the process, learn about other legal and constitutional provisions. While learning about the latter has been patchy,...

-The Indian Express Countries more successful in curbing COVID-19 are welfare states, ruled by left-of-centre parties. There is a lesson here. A plea has been filed before the Supreme Court, seeking to remove the words “socialist” and “secular” from the Preamble of the Constitution. But despite a persistent erosion over the last couple of decades, both principles were central to the type of republic our political forefathers had imagined. With the embrace...

-The Indian Express Madan B Lokur writes: It is time for the establishment to realise that the people of this country mean well, and in any democracy, there are bound to be different points of view. A gradual erosion of one of our most precious fundamental rights — the right to freedom of speech and expression — is adversely impacting the liberty of all those who dare to speak up. Our freedom...