-Press release by Common Cause dated 19th April, 2021 New Delhi: There are silences and gaps in the law that the questionable elements in the police take advantage of and undermine the rule of law, said Justice Madan B Lokur, former Justice of the Supreme Court of India. Delivering the Keynote Address on ‘Is the Rule of Law Backsliding in India?’ at the launch of the Status of Policing in India Report...

-The Tribune Punjab, Haryana may witness rain deficit New Delhi: For 2021, private forecaster Skymet Weather has predicted “normal” monsoon rains for the country at 103 per cent (907 mm) of the Long Period Average (LPA) rains this year. The rains will be “normal”, ending in the upper half of the normal range, the spread being 96-104% of LPA, said Skymet president GP Sharma. The prediction comes with an error margin of 5...

-The Hindu They were “harassed, abused and traumatised” and disparagingly called ‘coronavirus,’ says study A study commissioned by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) on racial discrimination and hate crimes against people from the NorthEast States found that the “NorthEast India seamlessly fits [an] Indian’s imagination of a Chinese person”. The study found that 78% of the people from the region who were interviewed believed that physical appearance was the most...

-The Hindu Labourers from West Bengal, Assam have gone home to exercise their franchise Kochi: Kabir Ahmad (name changed), a migrant worker in Perumbavoor, had to spend a small fortune on a flight ticket to return home to Hojai district of Assam last month following his parents’ anguished plea to get back in time for voting. Their desperation was borne out of the perceived danger posed to the community by the National...

-The Hindu There is a need to acknowledge the project’s appeal and the intricacies of representation in order to counter it Modern democracies are erected upon the twin pillars of rights and representation. While rights define the minimum due of individuals and communities vis-à-vis the state, representation enables the diverse voices in a polity to be heard. However, most critiques interrogate Hindutva through the limited lens of representation, arguing that it essentially...