-The Telegraph The country's apex child rights body has acknowledged that the laws on children are contradictory and initiated the process of a review. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has decided to set up a three-member working group to harmonise the laws and remove conflicting provisions. "The commission has observed that there are many gaps and discrepancies in various laws concerning the rights of children. The commission is, therefore,...

The Right to Information Act, enacted in 2005, has been considered as the most effective tool in the hands of citizens to fight for transparency and accountability. However, there exists huge gender gap in awareness and usage of RTI Act, finds the report entitled People's Monitoring of the RTI Regime in India 2011-13, released in October 2014 (please see the link below). Prepared by RTI Assessment and Advocacy Group (RaaG) and...

-The Week Shambhu Kumar, 8, quite liked his job as a domestic help in a small town in Assam. He had to mind two children nearly his age, keep an eye on the ducks and be available for chores all day. It wasn't too hard, and he was well fed, too, though he missed his grandmother, a tea garden labourer. One day, some women from the state education department came to the...

-The Business Standard The response by Indian industry and civil society to Satyarthi's honour has been conspicuously absent When an Indian citizen had last won a Nobel Prize - Amartya Sen for Economics in 1998 - the prize was much celebrated in the country, and the winner was awarded a Bharat Ratna the next year. But that was 16 years ago. Today, even as another Indian, Kailash Satyarthi, is set to jointly...

-Tehelka Despite the serious toll it takes on women's health, female sterilisation remains the most prevalent form of contraception in India. While memories of the 21 months of Emergency in 1975-77, imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, survives even today in the minds of Indian men as the fear of forced sterilisation, the country's population control policies have shifted over the years since then to target the politically less...