It is a little known fact that in roughly a fifth of our country’s land area, a different legal system operates. In some of these places, if you are caught with certain items, it is up to you to prove that you are innocent of a crime — and whether you go to jail depends on whether a government official kept proper records years earlier. If you are using some...

Without additional funding in the battle against tuberculosis for research, improved prevention, early diagnosis and treatment, some 8 million people will die from what is largely a curable disease between now and 2015, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today. “There is cause for optimism,” he said in a message marking World Tuberculosis Day. “The recent adoption of a fast and powerful new diagnostic tool promises to accelerate international gains against the disease. “At...

Why are the erstwhile RTI campaigners so alarmed five years after it became law? Why so many dharnas, rallies, conventions and hunger-strikes all over again? Part of the reason is that the silent revolution that the RTI has spawned needs to be defended from surreptitious alterations and manipulations, and partly because the RTI activists are being threatened, harassed and assaulted by the corrupt and the powerful, often with the connivance...

The quashing of the appointment of P.J. Thomas as the CVC shows the judiciary can go beyond the express provisions of law to render justice. THE Indian Constitution does not envisage strict separation of powers among the three branches of the government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. This flexibility permits marginal incursions though one branch cannot usurp the essential functions of the other. One of the essential functions...

Budget 2011-12 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. THREE decades ago, in the early years of the Special Component Plan (SCP) for Scheduled Castes – very recently renamed inappropriately as Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan (SCSP) – Indira Gandhi on her return as Prime Minister wrote two historical D.O. letters dated March 12, 1980, one to Central Ministers and the other to State Chief Ministers, regarding the SCP in the Central...