-The Telegraph   Had it not been for a tub of hot water and a celebrated judge in England in 1949, Bengal’s Singur law may have found itself in legal hot water. Justice I.P. Mukerji, who delivered the Singur judgment, was guided by a 62-year-old English case that dealt with hot water supply by a landlord, according to the order issued on Wednesday. The Calcutta judge used the principle of “purposive interpretation”, which figured...

Of late, there has been a debate on whether public programmes such as school education, scholarships, health-care delivery and access to microcredit can be targeted at beneficiaries based on religion; some consider this ‘unconstitutional' and argue that it amounts to discrimination. I highlight the constitutional provisions and argue that there is nothing in the Constitution which bars identification of beneficiaries based on religion. Religious identity is listed on a par...

Media Reports The UID Aadhaar project planning and system design shortcomings and security risks at the national (or macro) level have been discussed elsewhere.1 The present article views the Aadhaar project at the system operational level, with practical considerations based on observed and probable functioning at the service delivery end. Consider the following report in a local daily, The Mysore Bugle: Food riots: PDS outlet vandalised Mysore: August 2, 2015—The PDS outlet in Ashokpuram...

-The Telegraph   Mamata Banerjee tonight used her strongest language yet to condemn “the Jungle Mahal mafia” and virtually warned of a rethink on the undeclared ceasefire in the Maoist zone after the leader of a local party was shot dead in West Midnapore. Although the chief minister sought to paint the killers as the mafia, not Maoists, she ripped into the rebels’ supporters in universities in Calcutta, reflecting the distance she has...

I got a call around midnight in the Delhi summer. It was Lingaram, the young Muria adivasi from Sameli village in Dantewada, then studying in Noida’s International Media Institute of India. Linga’s misfortunes never seem to end: first he was accused of helping the Maoists, then tortured in the police station toilet, forced to be a special police officer, then released thanks to a habeas corpus petition. In a few months,...