-Press release by Common Cause dated 19th April, 2021 New Delhi: There are silences and gaps in the law that the questionable elements in the police take advantage of and undermine the rule of law, said Justice Madan B Lokur, former Justice of the Supreme Court of India. Delivering the Keynote Address on ‘Is the Rule of Law Backsliding in India?’ at the launch of the Status of Policing in India Report...

-The Hindu They were “harassed, abused and traumatised” and disparagingly called ‘coronavirus,’ says study A study commissioned by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) on racial discrimination and hate crimes against people from the northeast States found that the “northeast India seamlessly fits [an] Indian’s imagination of a Chinese person”. The study found that 78% of the people from the region who were interviewed believed that physical appearance was the most...

-The Tribune The recent violence that consumed Delhi forces us to confront a horrific if familiar truth: media-constructed ‘enemies’ eventually turn into flesh-and-blood people. The pogrom against the Sikhs in 1984, as the work of academics like the Oxford-based Pritam Singh reminds us, was preceded by what Singh termed “deeply embedded institutional communalism” in the coverage of events like Operation Bluestar and Indira Gandhi’s funeral by government-run media All India Radio and...

-TheWire.in A new report has also highlighted how long work hours, absence of weekly offs and political and departmental pressure are impacting police personnel in the country. New Delhi: Nearly half the police personnel in India feel that Muslims are likely to be “naturally prone” towards committing a crime. Likewise, a large percentage of police personnel believe that “being in the police requires physical strength and aggressive behaviour which women lack; women...

-News18.com Acclaimed journalist and Founder-Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India, P Sainath attributes the existential crisis confronting India’s agrarian society to macro-economic policies set in motion 25 years ago. Talking to Anuradha SenGupta, Sainath makes a case for state intervention in agriculture and says the Modi government, with its shifting positions and policies like demonetisation has only aggravated the assault on agrarian livelihoods. Dismissing the buzz about imminent new initiatives...