-The Times of India KOLKATA: Married women continue to be battered in their homes in Bengal. More than one in 10 cases of crime against women in 2014 was reported from the state. Bengal accounted for one in five cases of cruelty by the husband and relatives, far more than north Indian states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana, whose society has been typecast as brutally parochial against the more 'liberal'...

-The Hindu Business Line As the Right to Information Act completes 10 years, we examine how RTI has changed people’s lives, become a byword for democracy, and helped alter the relationship between citizen and state Mintu Devi’s relationship with the ration shop changed the day she filed an RTI. In the jhuggis of New Seemapuri, situated on the northeastern edge of Delhi, she is a legend. The 37-year-old mother of four is...

-The Times of India Businessman Rajesh Varkharia thought he was waging a lonely legal battle till a chance meeting with two other dowry accused at the Bangalore trial court. "I was totally in the dark. I would just sign where the lawyer asked me to," he says, describing his five days in prison as an accused under the section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, the dowry harassment act. Varkharia and three others...

-The Times of India The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is a dream long deferred, and now it looks like the courts can barely conceal their impatience. A Supreme Court bench, hearing a case on a Hindu woman's petition on inheritance, was recently stirred into ordering an examination of practices like polygamy and triple talaq in Muslim personal law, which it declared "injurious to public morals". The Centre is already on a deadline...

-The Indian Express Decades of mismanagement have hobbled India’s mental health programme An event commemorating World Mental Health week opened at the WHO in Geneva this week. At a key session, the Disease Control Priorities project released its recommendations to governments to address the burden of mental disorders. This was timely for India, for few countries have witnessed so many high-profile debates related to mental health while ignoring the centrality of mental health...