At the Cancun climate change conference in December 2010, Jairam Ramesh, Union minister for environment and forests, raised the white flag of surrender when, departing from the prepared text, he declared, “all countries, we believe, must take on binding commitments under appropriate legal forms”. The minister thus signalled that India will give in to pressures from developed countries to convert its voluntary, nationally-determined mitigation actions into internationally-binding commitments in an...

Proposed changes to the Right to Information (RTI) Act threaten to render it ineffective to a large extent. The Amendments include restricting questions per RTI query to one and word count to 250 per query, and levying a 'hire' charge. If the Department of Personal and Training's proposed draft comes into effect it would be applicable to all central government agencies and respective state commissions can follow suit and adopt...

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act has in its four years faced many challenges in implementation, says a monitoring report. FIVE years ago, Parliament enacted a significant piece of legislation relating to women. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA), 2005, designed as a civil law, came into effect a year later, in October 2006. The fundamental feature of the Act was that it empowered magistrates...

Proposed changes to the Right to Information (RTI) Act threaten to render it ineffective to a large extent. The Amendments include restricting questions per RTI query to one and word count to 250 per query, and levying a higher charge. If the Department of Personnel and Training proposed draft comes into effect it would be applicable to all Central government agencies and respective state commissions can follow suit. RTI activists...

The National Advisory Council has suggested Amendments to the Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010, and to the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Rules. It is also awaiting the comments of the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) to its suggestions on the new Right to Information Rules. Finally, in a bid to strengthen the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS),...