-The Friday Times How are demographics changing in Assam and Bengal? And what does this mean for 'indigenous' communities? Garga Chatterjee considers the argument for territorial purity The Assam state of the Indian Union has seen violence flare up suddenly from July 6th. With more than 40 people reported dead and upwards of one and a half lakh displaced in a week, the Kokrajhar riots between Bodos and Muslims have again brought...

-The Hindu Public Interest Litigation is a good thing when it is used to enforce the rights of the disadvantaged. But it has now been diluted to interfere with the power of the government to take decisions on a range of policy matters Judicial activism is not an easy concept to define. It means different things to different persons. Critics denounce judicial decisions as activist when they do not agree with them....

-The Telegraph Ten-year-old Ayush Chauhan was smart as well as lucky. The Class IV student gave a fictitious phone number to the three kidnappers who had dragged him into a car on a Ghaziabad street on May 11. As they kept trying the number to make a ransom call to his father, Ayush gave them the slip. Eighteen-day-old Saumya Lodi had no such luck when two masked men kidnapped her from her home...

The Guwahati molestation incident throws light on the violence women face overtly and covertly in India, at home and outside. The shocking incident of the beating and molestation of a young woman by a mob in Guwahati in Assam on July 9 has exposed the ugly underbelly of modern, globalised India, where women face violence, covertly and overtly, at home and outside. The incident has also exposed the lackadaisical manner in...

-The Hindu Supreme Court asks Chhattisgarh to pay doctor Rs. 5 lakh for mental agony The Supreme Court, coming down heavily on Chhattisgarh police officers for custodial torture of an Ayurvedic doctor in 1992, directed the State government to pay him Rs. 5 lakh as compensation for the mental agony and humiliation he suffered. It is to be recovered from the erring officers in equal proportion. Allowing an appeal from Mehmood Nayyar Azam,...