If the Bill seeking to protect children from sexual offences is passed by Parliament in the form in which it was cleared last week by the Cabinet, then there will be a direct but unstated conflict between the general and special laws on rape. Under the special law proposed in the freshly revised "Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Bill" , no person below 18 years will have the legal capability...

Drug smugglers and third-world dictators laundering ill-gotten wealth through secretive banking systems in tax havens is an anachronistic image from crime novels. Leveraging US' remarkable success in compelling tax havens to block terrorist financing, the G20/OECD have successfully persuaded tax havens to improve tax transparency and participate in an international regime of information exchange.  All tax havens have committed to OECD standards for tax transparency and are executing Tax Information Exchange...

At a recent meeting in Kolkata, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee threw up his hands for not being able to present a bold Budget because of coalition politics. Indeed, Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress, a coalition partner, has been a thorn in the side of the UPA. She enjoys a veto on nearly everything that the government wishes to do. If such are the compulsions of coalition politics, should we not...

-Mid-Day.com Politicians are not known to be fans of the Right to Information Act, but now they seem to have discovered that they can use the same law to obtain details on RTI activists' work, allegedly in order to know which activist they need to harass to prevent the next big expose. RTI activists claim that political leaders are making their proxies use the sunshine law to know what information the activists...

Chennai comes up with innovative ideas. ‘Prime Point,' set up by a gentleman known in true Tamil Nadu-style as ‘Prime Point Srinivasan,' has instituted a set of awards for parliamentarians called Sansad Ratna Awards. ‘PP' felicitously chose Ambedkar Jayanti for the conferment ceremony this year and conferred the honour on four MPs: Anand Rao Adsul — Number 1 in Questions (754). The total tally of debates, private bills and questions raised...