By scraping and bowing before khap leaders and agreeing to hold aloft their frayed flag of Patriarchy, youth icon and Congress MP from Kurukshetra Naveen Jindal may have staved off a siege on his home by the violent keepers of middle-ages morality. But other MPs and MLAs who represent areas where the khap writ runs have now been warned that the lawmakers face khap ire if they don't make their...

Impressing upon political parties to take note of discrimination against women from the Dalit and backward communities, scores of women panchayat council representatives on Friday demanded quota within quota in the Women's Reservation Bill. They were participating in a day-long conclave organised by ActionAid India here. Over 50 of them were from Bihar, West Bengal, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. “Yes, in theory women are equal to men. But even stepping out of...

Encouraging women's participation in politics, the historic bill to reserve 33 percent of seats for them in parliament and the legislatures will impact the country's political scenario, the patriarchal system and the caste struggle in rural India, experts say. Bibhu Mahapatra, consultant of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project on Legal Empowerment, said: 'The 73rd constitutional amendment, passed in 1992, gave constitutional recognition to local self governance and reserved 33...

Imagine that the climate summit conference in Copenhagen this weekend was not a gathering of nations. Imagine a gathering of delegates from the many ages of a single nation. The fault lines would not be India and China versus the global rich, but rather China 1800 versus China 1978 versus China 2100. It would be a negotiation not between different lands but between different historical facts, different levels of survivalism....