Research by the Asian Centre for Human rights, released on 18 September 2013, provides renewed evidence of marginalisation of Scheduled Tribes (STs) or adivasis in government employment, and in fact suggests that such exclusion is growing in some areas despite policies of reservation. (The entire report can be accessed here). Until May 2013, the number of backlog adivasi vacancies with the Central Government was 12,195 posts. Breaking up these figures...

-The Indian Express Manual scavenging laws will need to be supported by better sanitation policies. The recent passage of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill by Parliament is a welcome, long-overdue step in the right direction. The bill replaces the outdated and rarely implemented 1993 law, which purported to abolish manual scavenging. It has been passed primarily due to a sustained campaign by thousands of former women...

-The Hindustan Times Amid the widespread support for the city court's decision to sentence to death the four convicts responsible for the December 16 gang-rape and murder, there are voices of dissent on whether death penalty is a deterrent against heinous crimes. Jurists opposed to death penalty and Human rights groups expressed disappointment over the general euphoria on the death sentence, saying the tendency of looking for quick fix solutions to douse...

-The Hindu     Only the ‘principal offence' in an FIR gets into NCRB data The National Crime Records Bureau, India's official source of crime data, is systematically undercounting virtually every crime in India on account of a statistical shortcoming, The Hindu has learnt. The December 16 gang rape, which prompted much examination of data on sexual assault in the country, will not even figure in NCRB data on rape owing to this statistical flaw. The...

-The Hindu Nearly one out of four men in a United Nations study of 10,000 men in Asia admitted to having committed a rape, a report released on Tuesday shows. Marital rape was by far the most common type of rape, followed by the rape of an intimate partner. Sexual entitlement - the "belief that men were entitled to sex regardless of consent" - was the top reason men gave for committing...