-The Wall Street Journal These days, Indian policymakers are debating how to create a vast new food entitlement program. There is talk of poor households struggling to cope with high food prices and malnourishment among their children. What you don’t hear much about, however, is the most tragic and outrageous consequence of India’s failure to feed its people adequately: starvation deaths. India is a nation that prides itself on having been self-sufficient in...

An ongoing hearing before a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court, looking into media coverage of sub-judice cases, has had its scope expanded to include coverage of criminal investigations and television shows containing sex and violence. The court intends to examine questions related to criminal investigations, including raids, questioning and arrests by police officials. If the court does rule adversely, then crime reporting may no longer be the same and late-night...

High Courts have failed to adhere to the Central Information Commission's directive to follow the Right to Information (RTI) Act rulebook. CIC, the final appellate authority for RTI Act, had ordered all the High Courts to disclose complete information of the organisation, employees, salaries drawn, decisions taken and budget allocated, on their websites by April 1. However, not a single high court has complied with the direction. In January, CIC Satyananda...

Students graduating in law may have to do a stint of compulsory practical training in courts, like the internship that medical graduates have to undergo. Law teachers this newspaper spoke to agreed that such a period of apprenticeship would help new law graduates but argued that it should be kept optional. The original proposal to make legal internship a compulsory part of the five-year LLB course had come from the Chief Justice...

The Judiciary is the third branch of government. As with the Executive and Legislature, the public has a right to see and know and understand the functioning of this branch. That is why India, like every other democracy, has embraced the concept of open court proceedings and trials, except in those situations where, for security or other compelling reasons, in camera hearings are required. In the Mirajkar case ( Naresh Shridhar...