Cabinet clears change in divorce law: Women to get part of husband’s property In a move that could be a setback to land acquisition for commercial use, a parliamentary committee unanimously recommended that the government should not acquire land for industrial, commercial or for-profit enterprises or private companies. Instead, the panel, which has proposed legislation favouring landowners, recommends that private companies and public-private partnerships would have to buy land in the open...

At last, the real anxieties lurking behind what has come to be called the “Ambedkar cartoon” controversy are out in the open. It is hideously clear by now that MPs “uniting across parties” are acting as one only to protect themselves from public scrutiny, debate and criticism. It turns out, as some of us suspected all along, that the “sentiments” that have been “hurt” this time are the easily bruised...

A universal pension scheme for social protection must be part of a broader strategy of economic expansion different from the present neoliberal order. INDIA must be one of the worst countries in the world in terms of not providing even minimal social security for most of its people. This is not just a major failure of the development project in the country – it is also a significant cause of...

Religious and social groups have trampled on the freedom of expression of artists and scholars to serve their own agendas. “FOR all the big talk about India's great tradition of cultural and religious tolerance, many forces in the social life of our country and a number of established organisations, including the so-called non-political ones, have time and again resorted to blatant suppression of freedom of expression, pointing forcefully to the...

Jatav residents of Ramgarh in U.P. resist attempts by members of a powerful community to grab their land by violent means. IN what could be considered one of the worst incidents of vendetta against Dalits in the National Capital Region (NCR), members of the Dalit Jatav community were beaten up brutally by some members of the dominant Gujjar community in Ramgarh village in the Greater Noida area of Uttar Pradesh...