-Express News Service Bowing to pressure from opposition parties and women’s rights organisations, the union cabinet today cleared some more amendments to the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill to give women a clearly-defined share in their husband’s “immovable residential property” — including that acquired before marriage — in divorce cases. If passed, the amended Bill would allow “equal share of residential property” to the wife and children. The wife’s share will be decided...

Bowing to pressure from women's activists, the government has made some crucial amendments to divorce laws, giving women half a share in the husband's residential property irrespective of whether it was acquired before or during the marriage. The amendment was cleared by the Union Cabinet on Thursday. The wife's share in other assets owned by her husband - movable and immoveable property - has been left to the discretion of the...

The row over a cartoon featuring Dalit leader Ambedkar shows a lack of critical thinking in the Indian polity. The cartoon by Shankar Pillai that caused such pandemonium in the Indian Parliament on 11 May 2012 when various Dalit and non-Dalit members demanded its omission from a Class IX textbook was originally published in 1949. It depicts Dalit leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar with a whip riding a snail entitled ‘Constitution’...

At last, the real anxieties lurking behind what has come to be called the “Ambedkar cartoon” controversy are out in the open. It is hideously clear by now that MPs “uniting across parties” are acting as one only to protect themselves from public scrutiny, debate and criticism. It turns out, as some of us suspected all along, that the “sentiments” that have been “hurt” this time are the easily bruised...

-The Hindu Unnerved by the Indian stand, IT monopolies are propagating the myth that a multilateral governance structure will kill the decentralised, multi-stakeholder nature of the Internet and lead to ‘government control' Last year, in a statement to the U.N. General Assembly, India sought the creation of a U.N. Committee on Internet-Related Policies (CIRP) in order to democratise global Internet governance, which at present is either U.S.-controlled, or subject to the policies...