-The Hindu Why the inactivated polio vaccine is essential for India With wild polio virus strains reduced by 99.9% since 1988, the world is inching towards eradicating polio. But unfortunately, more children today are affected by the live, weakened virus contained in the oral polio vaccine (OPV) that is meant to protect them. The weakened virus in the vaccine can circulate in the environment, occasionally turn neurovirulent and cause vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV)...

-The Indian Express Aadhaar verdict: Supreme Court rules today on a bunch of petitions against Aadhaar. From validity to fears of misuse for surveillance and privacy, a look at the issues that have come up before the five-judge Constitution Bench. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will deliver its verdict on a clutch of petitions challenging Aadhaar on various grounds. A five-judge Constitution Bench will rule on questions such as: * Does the government...

-The Hindu The Delhi High Court order striking down the Begging Act heeds the Constitution’s transformative nature In 1871, the colonial regime passed the notorious Criminal Tribes Act. This law was based upon the racist British belief that in India there were entire groups and communities that were criminal by birth, nature, and occupation. The Act unleashed a reign of terror, with its systems of surveillance, police reporting, the separation of families,...

-The Hindu Can India manage with a certain amount of disorder to sustain a plural vision of democracy? The current situation in Assam seems like a nightmare, a warning about the internal contradictions of democracy. It is a warning that the 19th century ideas of democracy as electoral-ism and the notion of the nation-state as a fetishism of borders may be inappropriate as imaginations for the 21st century. It is a caution...

-PTI Bench issues notice to Union government on a plea against the project to track “digital media chatter from all core social media platforms” The Supreme Court on Friday took a strong note of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s decision to set up a social media hub for monitoring online data, observing that it would be “like creating a surveillance state”. The court said the government wanted to tap citizens’ WhatsApp messages and...