The draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill 2011, proposed by the NAC, has attracted welcome debate. Any legislative measure, intended to correct a historical wrong, should indeed be subject to the closest scrutiny to improve and strengthen it. For if we get this right it can help realise, far better than we have so far, the constitutional guarantees of equality before the law. This bill is built on India’s...

A war has broken out in some parts of east-central India, especially some regions of the Dandakaranya forests that span across the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh. Reportedly, there are thousands of Maoist guerrillas armed with sophisticated weapons confronting a vast array of paramilitary forces assembled by the government of India. Caught in the crossfire are millions of poor, marginalised and historically isolated adivasis. Their habitat, in which...

New tensions are emerging between the government and its think tank, with the food ministry making major changes to a National Advisory Council (NAC) draft of a new law slated to become the blockbuster social-security scheme of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s troubled second tenure. Key provisions of the national food security Bill, 2011, due to be introduced in Parliament’s next session starting 2 August, and estimated to cost the...

A recent study on the role of statutory institutions in protection of Dalit rights in Rajasthan, which prompted the State Government to take action in 31 cases of atrocities against members of Scheduled Castes, is proposed to be replicated in five other States in the country. Civil rights activists and Dalit victims of violence and discrimination highlighted the study's findings and deliberated on the specific instances investigated by it at an...

The UT Administration might be congratulating itself over its achievement of having implemented the Right to Education Act (RTE) in the city but the actual situation in schools leaves much to be desired. The lack of basic infrastructure, including seating arrangements and classrooms, is defeating the basic purpose of the Act. The Government High School, Mauli Jagran, is one such school in the city that is bursting at its seam...