In what could raise the hackles of women's rights activists, the Law Commission has recommended to the Centre that the strict law dealing with dowry offences be made compoundable - a move that will allow an accused to escape a jail term by paying a fine. The recommendation to alter the tough provisions of Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code comes in the backdrop of Supreme Court suggesting it may...

Eleven years ago, Muturkham forests, lying southeast of capital Ranchi, used to be the timber mafia’s busy workplace. No different from the rest of the state, which has lost 50% of forest cover to illegal logging in the last 10 years. Until 1999, when Muturkham’s jungle mafia met ‘Lady Tarzan’. Jamuna Tuddu, 32, a short and stout woman belonging to the Santahl tribe who had studied till Class X, led a...

-The Economic Times   Bureaucracy bashing is India's favourite national vocation. And for good reason. Our bureaucracy has its good share of crooks, criminals and cheats who need to be put away - with or without a Lokpal. The simple counter-question is, does the bureaucracy have a disproportionately larger share of crooks than in other professions in India, and the data clearly does not say a resounding yes.  In fact, there is perhaps...

It would be grave folly to recoil from the N-option, our safest Nuclear Is Clear     The world needs cheap energy and, as of now, nuclear plants are the most efficient means to that end     Switching to fossil fuel sources will add to global warming. In extremis, the oceans could boil away.     The lesson from Fukushima is no worse than that tsunamis are a danger to everything in their path *** After the...

-The Telegraph   The country’s top judge today advised the judiciary to work as independently of public sentiments as of politics, stressing that courts should deliver rulings according to the law and not the majority opinion. “Apart from independence from politics, the judiciary also needs independence from popular interest,” PTI quoted Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.H. Kapadia as saying while presiding over the Nani Palkhivala Memorial Trust Lecture in Mumbai. “If an order...