-Press release by People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) dated 2nd June, 2021 We, the members of various Human Rights Organisations and Concerned individuals, condemn the appointment of former SC Judge, Shri Arun Kumar Mishra, as the next Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of India by the selection Committee headed by the Prime Minister. What is troubling  is that the decision to appoint Justice Arun Kumar Mishra as NHRC...

-ThePrint.in In various state govts, the office of district magistrate has been reduced to a glorified post office that receives instructions from various govt departments. Not so long ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ridiculed India’s civil servants in Parliament when he questioned whether the government should be run by ‘babus’, a euphemism for bureaucrats. It is ironic to see the PM now, addressing the very same ‘babus’, the district magistrates of...

-TheWire.in Modi did not want only to prevent a second wave; he wanted all the credit for stopping COVID-19 in its tracks to go to him and him alone. In her heart-rending description of her desperate search for oxygen to save her father’s life, the celebrated TV news anchor Barkha Dutt ascribed his death to three features of governance that have defined Modi’s India: complacency, callousness and incompetence. She could have added...

-Hindustan Times The Centre and states are at war, but India urgently needs a coordinated response. It’s not too late. But soon it will be In an influential paper published over a decade ago, the economist Lant Pritchett described India as a “flailing State” — in which the head, that is the elite institutions at the national level (and, in some cases, state level) remained sound and functional but was no longer...

India is facing a second and worse wave of Covid-19 pandemic. At this time, the country requires journalism to tell the stories of courage, of loss and grief, of the state of preparedness and about the efforts being made by communities, individuals, civil society and government. Journalists are needed to document with rigour the gaps and lacunae in governance when it appears. At the same time, journalists need to be vigilant about...