The exploitation of migrant construction workers has grown alongside the expansion of the industry. It's time the government got serious about upholding the law. A recent report in The Hindu on the violation of labour laws at a massive construction site belonging to the Army Welfare Housing Organisation in Bangalore raises yet again the repeated neglect of regulations relating to the employment and welfare of workers by construction companies in India. For...
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Sound and fury, signifying nothing-Shailaja Bajpai
News coverage of the Aarushi case, Sachin in Rajya Sabha, and the revelation of the Bofors whistleblower added little to the discussion Have you noticed that the hilarious news spoof, The Week That Wasn’t (CNN-IBN) bears an uncanny resemblance to every day’s TV news/ discussions? We’ll call it, the news that wasn’t. News. And it goes something like this: Monday, Nupur Talwar, denied bail, was jailed in Aarushi and Hemraj murder cases. All...
More »Vatal Nagaraj to stage protest seeking toilets for rural women
-The Hindu Kannada Chalavali Vatal Paksha leader and former MLA Vatal Nagaraj is all set to embark upon one more protest. He will now put up toilet equipment and accessories on display at the Kempe Gowda bus stand here on May 8 to protest against the lack of toilet facilities for rural women. Announcing this at a press conference here on Tuesday, Mr. Nagaraj said that the protest would be taken to...
More »Unpacking India’s Internet Censorship Debate-Shivam Vij
Recent debates on Internet censorship in India have focused to the allegedly free-for-all nature of the internet. Those of us who have argued against internet censorship have been somewhat misrepresented as arguing for absolute freedom whereby the reasonable restrictions laid down in Article 19 (A) of the Constitution of India don’t apply. Nothing could be farther than the truth. It has been said that the internet can be used to incite...
More »Media Follies and Supreme Infallibility by Sukumar Muralidharan
The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...
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