-The Hindu For two years, national political parties have defied the RTI Act that they themselves passed. They have not sought legal remedy either by appealing against the CIC order declaring them to be Public Authorities. If lawmakers defy the law in this fashion, it sets a bad precedent. Political parties should be more accountable if they break the law, not less Six national parties in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP),...

-The Hindu With its judgment to strike down a legal provision for violating freedom of speech, the Supreme Court has paved the way for thoughtful jurisprudence in the age of the Internet While describing Sec.124A of the IPC (sedition) as the "prince among the political sections designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen", Mahatma Gandhi offered us an ironic way of thinking about liberty-curbing laws through the metaphor of illegal tyrants....

-The Indian Express Indian National Interest requires that our environment be ruined, people displaced, resources thoughtlessly mined, all for the benefit of foreign companies and for the private benefit of people in power. This is the only conclusion that we can draw after reading the recent revelations on Essar alongside the ministry of home affairs (MHA) affidavit in the Delhi High Court responding to Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai's plea that her...

-The Hindu Long list of agents against free expression Censorship across the country is on the rise with as many as 52 instances being recorded in the first quarter of 2014. Releasing data on censorship for the first three months of this year, media watch group, The Hoot, said this averaged a little less than one a day. The agents against free expression were not just the state or fringe groups. The...

-The Hindu     Governments have ritually abused the latitude granted by the Indian Penal Code and the Constitution to harass, intimidate and arrest scores of writers, journalists and artists It is common knowledge that Article 19 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution lays down that "all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression"; it is also common knowledge that this fundamental right is not absolute, as the immediately following...