-Livemint.com Odisha is a front-runner in women’s land ownership, much of it owing to government policies from the 1980s. But has ownership led to empowerment? Surrounded by sun-drenched paddy fields interspersed with jackfruit and banana trees, Sanakusupadu is a hamlet in Odisha’s tribal-dominated district of Rayagada. Here, almost every married woman owns land. No matter how small the holding, land documents of the 62 households in this village bear the names of the...

-Livemint.com According to the National Family Health Survey data, the average age at death for Dalit women was 39.5 years against 54.1 years for higher-caste women New Delhi: Dalit women in India die younger than upper caste women, face discrimination in accessing healthcare and lag behind on almost all health indicators. While violence against Dalits may be the main form of discrimination visible to the outside world, there are many other ways in...

-The Hindu The social activist whose new book on the RTI is just out, worries about the doublespeak in politics today, where rhetoric and substance never match The past couple of months have been hectic for Aruna Roy. The social activist and Magsaysay Award winner has been travelling across the country to promote her book, The RTI Story: Power to the People, which came out in April. After waiting more than a...

-TheWire.in There have been no efforts to regularly compile and publish data on the social, economic and professional backgrounds of judges in either the higher or lower judiciary. The appointment of Indu Malhotra to the Supreme Court has rekindled the debate surrounding the ‘representativeness’ of the judiciary. She is only the seventh woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court in the seven decades of its existence, and the first woman...

-PTI New Delhi: The Central Information Commission has directed the Bureau of Immigration, an agency exempted from RTI Act disclosures, to give a person details of his travel as he needed it for defence in penal proceedings that landed him in jail. The CIC underlined that any impediment to a person's self-defence would be a breach of human rights. The case pertains to RTI applicant M. Dinesh, who had sought information related to...