-Outlook Rape trials must end within two months as stipulated under law, the Supreme Court has said directing trial courts to "strictly adhere" to existing norms while asking them to rule out the possibility of "manoeuvring" through undue long adjournments. A bench of justices Swatanter Kumar and Fakkir Mohammed Ibrahim Kalifulla gave their judgement on December 6, 10 days before the Delhi gangrape which triggered nation-wide outrage with strong demands for fast-tracking...

-The Indian Express The protests in Delhi are generating two sorts of anxiety. The spectacle of a spontaneous, unstructured, unavoidably vague movement borne out of genuine rage has unsettled the establishment. And it will respond the way it does: by recourse to the language of order. The second is a critique that the movement is misdirected: it is blaming government for what is, in fact, a deep social problem. It is...

-The Economic Times Martha C Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She has written extensively about reLIGious minorities and their predicament across the world. While her latest book, The New ReLIGious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age, focuses on the treatment of reLIGious minorities, especially Muslims, in the western world, she has written about the meticulous targeting...

-The Economic Times There is no need to get scared about losing internet freedom, at least till January 2015. That's the view of top telecom policy watchers, who closely monitored the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) that ended in uncertainty earlier this month in Dubai. Policy experts say the changes affecting internet users in India, if any, would be slow and minor with little or...

-The Indian Express The Zee-Jindal issue came up in the Lok Sabha during Question Hour on Tuesday with members expressing their concern over unethical practices in the media, including paid news and unfair reporting. While some members underlined the need for regulating the media, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Manish Tewari maintained that self-regulation was the best option. He offered to have a detailed discussion on the issue and maintained...