-Business World In the run up to Independence Day, Professor Ashok Gulati wrote a scathing critique of what he has described as “elitist biases in public policy”, that ignore the reality of the masses in rural areas. The reality he describes is that of low rates of growth in agriculture; a sector that majority of Indians still depend on.  He lamented the excessive preponderance of economic policy discourse in the country...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: The Sheena Bora murder case, in which her mother Indrani Mukerjea is an accused, is not an isolated incident involving a woman in a serious crime. Last year, as many as 579 women were arrested for murder in Maharashtra. Although way below the number of men arrested for the same crime in the same period (5,187), it is the highest for any state. The crime report for 2014...

-Economic and Political Weekly The draft National Health Policy 2015 is an improvement over its predecessors--the policies of 1984 and 2002. However, it also reveals several gaps, inconsistencies and blind spots which tend to dilute otherwise constructive proposals. The purpose of this article is to open up the draft to further public debate and comment. Forum for Medical Ethics Society (fmesmumbai@gmail.com) is a voluntary, non-profit organisation registered in Mumbai. The society was...

-The Hindu The latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau show that it is time to change our understanding of felony and its registration by the police With every passing year of writing on the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s crime data, it has become increasingly clear that what I am forced to do is essentially compare apples and oranges, and then make a normative call based on that comparison. This...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Marital rape could soon be an offence, if a Centre-appointed panel has its way. The Pam Rajput committee, that recently submitted its report to the women and child development (WCD) ministry, has recommended that as a pro-woman measure, marital rape should be consider an offence irrespective of the age of the wife and the relationship between the perpetrator and survivor. The recommendations will be discussed in an inter-ministerial...