The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...

The government is considering to make changes in existing laws to abolish all forms of child labour under 18 years.  A government panel has recommended amendment to Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act that makes distinction between hazardous and non-hazardous categories of work for children under 14 years.  Child rights activists has been demanding for a revision in the definition of child labour to bring uniformity in all laws, and recognize all...

Hindutva continues to be the main agenda of the BJP in Karnataka, as is evident from the cattle slaughter Bill. THE Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single largest party in the Assembly elections and managed to form the government in Karnataka in 2008. The electoral victory encouraged the hard-line elements in the party and organisations with Hindutva affiliation to advance their ideology in a spirited manner and stoke communal...

Handloom weavers in Andhra Pradesh are in a crisis brought on by policy blindness and the emphasis on powerlooms. WHEN P. Pulliah, a weaver in the traditional cotton handloom centre of Chirala in Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh, describes the sarees he crafts, thread by delicate thread, his face lights up with joy. He animatedly explains that the sarees have a border on both sides. And they are fully embellished, he...

Like many board games that were developed in India, of which chess is perhaps the most important and famous, the game of “snakes and ladders” too emerged in this country a long time ago. With its balancing of snakes that pull you down and ladders that take you up, this game has been used again and again as a metaphor for life, telling us about our fortunes and misfortunes, and...