Rather than shutting its doors on ‘civil society’, the government should be thanking its stars that the latter wants to make law, not war. Distributing tee-shirts with this slogan would be a better use of the government’s ‘hearts and minds’ funds than the integrated action plan to counter Naxals, or the army’s tourism trips to Pune for Kashmiri schoolgirls. The UPA regime has been unprecedented for the spate of legislation that...
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Dalits punished for entering temple: Government steps in
-NDTV A board outside a temple for the Goddess Kali orders Dalits to stop at this point. "Harijans can pray from here," it declares. The warning sign was put up in August last year after three schoolgirls entered the shrine to offer Prasad to the Goddess, an icon of empowerment and Shakti. The caretaker of the temple in Orissa's Puri district offers no apologies for the discrimination. "It is against tradition,"...
More »A bill to settle a terrible debt by Siddharth Varadarajan
For decades, the victims of communal and targeted violence have been denied protections of law that the rest of us take for granted. It's time to end this injustice. In a vibrant and mature democracy, there would be no need to have special laws to prosecute the powerful or protect the weak. If a crime takes place, the law would simply take its course. In a country like ours, however, life...
More »UGC to review schemes for target groups by Basant Kumar Mohanty
The University Grants Commission has set up four committees to review educational development schemes for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, minorities and women, the relook prompted by statistics that show the measures haven’t been all that effective. While the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education for all categories in 2007-08 was 13.58, the corresponding percentage for SCs was 11.62 and for STs 9.86 per cent, according to HRD ministry figures for...
More »NHRC retains ‘A' status by J Venkatesan
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has received a shot in the arm by retaining its “A” status in its accreditation with the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) of the National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), Geneva. The Accreditation Sub-Committee of the ICC-NHRIs has recommended that the NHRC be reaccredited with “A” status. The decision, taken at the session of the ICC Sub-Committee on accreditation in Geneva from May 23 to 27 was...
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