Recent debates on Internet censorship in India have focused to the allegedly free-for-all nature of the internet. Those of us who have argued against internet censorship have been somewhat misrepresented as arguing for absolute freedom whereby the reasonable restrictions laid down in Article 19 (A) of the Constitution of India don’t apply. Nothing could be farther than the truth. It has been said that the internet can be used to incite...

The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media Reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad Reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...

The private member’s Bill that Rahul Gandhi’s close aide and Congress MP Meenakshi Natarajan was scheduled to introduce in Parliament last week lays down a draconian set of rules clearly aimed to gag and threaten the media in the name of “protecting national interest”. Called the Print and Electronic Media Standards and Regulation Bill, 2012, it provides for a media regulatory authority — part selected by the I&B minister and three...

-The Telegraph From July 1, TV viewers in the four metros will for the first time have a choice over which channels to watch and not have it decided for them by multi-system operators (MSOs) and local cable operators. Also, they will have to pay only for channels they have chosen. The rest of India will have this choice by December 2014 when the digital transmission of cable TV signals becomes mandatory...

The implementation of Right to Education Act may have got a shot in the arm with the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the 25% reservation in unaided private schools for children from lower income group families but inAndhra Pradesh (and possibly other states in the country), the Act might soon figure among the many well-intentioned government schemes that do not impact, leave alone benefit, its target group. At best, the...