-The Hindu People’s objections, from Chhattisgarh to Odisha, against large development projects have brought out the real power of the Forest Rights Act of 2006. Democracy is alive and kicking in India. No, I am not referring to the Assembly elections. It is unfortunate that the term democracy has been reduced to the drama of periodic elections and the subsequent reliance of the electorate on politicians and bureaucrats. When these powerful few...

-The Indian Express First-of-its-kind report provides 360-degree view of the administration of capital punishment — who gets it, and what it is to live in death’s shadow. Reason and scope of Study The National Law University’s Death Penalty Research Project has prepared a socio-economic profile of prisoners sentenced to death in India, using statistics and case studies, to help create a resource for an in-depth understanding of the administration of the death penalty...

Publicly available data collected and collated by the civil society organization DAKSH under the Rule of Law Project shows that in the 21 high courts of India, the average pendency of cases is over 3 years i.e. 1,141 days, as on 11 April, 2016. The oldest case in a high court has been pending since 1 January, 1958, which indicates the extent of delay in getting justice in India. The 21 high...

-Livemint.com/ Bloomberg Corruption being rife though, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has boosted agricultural wages and rural-labour market Over the last 10 years in India, perhaps no other law has sparked such sustained debate as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), universally known as ‘Narega.’ Passed by the previous Congress government in February 2006 and upheld by the Narendra Modi administration, it’s given rise to the...

-Business Standard The new rules will hopefully do better By notifying fresh rules to govern the handling of electronic waste or e-waste (the earlier rules issued five years ago were quite inadequate), the Indian government has taken a key step to combat this most lethal form of pollution. Organic and easily recyclable metal, glass and plastic waste need not permanently remain in landfills. But hard-to-recover substances from e-waste like mercury make their...