A fact-finding report on the recent demolition of a century-old rooftop mosque at Pur in Rajasthan has held “crony capitalism” and “mining greed” responsible for the incident. It demanded a judicial inquiry into the role of a corporate house, ruling Congress leaders and a section of the clergy in making the deal for sale of the place of worship. Jindal Saw Limited, owned by the O.P. Jindal Group, bought the mosque...

Recent debates on Internet censorship in India have focused to the allegedly free-for-all nature of the internet. Those of us who have argued against internet censorship have been somewhat misrepresented as arguing for absolute freedom whereby the reasonable restrictions laid down in Article 19 (A) of the Constitution of India don’t apply. Nothing could be farther than the truth. It has been said that the internet can be used to incite...

How an image-fixated chief minister has bent the state’s media to his will If you haven’t heard of an income tax raid on the residential premises of Nitish Kumar’s close aide and treasurer of the ruling Janata Dal-United (JD-U), Vinay Kumar Sinha, you are not alone. Thanks to the local media, it took a while even in Patna—where the house is located—for people to get to know. This, incidentally, is the...

The minorities and Dalits, who constitute 40 per cent of the Telangana [ Images ] population, are now saying that they will prefer to remain in a united Andhra Pradesh rather than have a Telangana which is controlled by "communal forces", reports Vicky Nanjappa. There can be no two thoughts over the fact that the Telangana movement has been the biggest challenge for the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh. Till the...

India's decision this month to produce Germany-based multinational Bayer's anti-cancer drug Nexavar, in the first use of "compulsory licensing" in South Asia, will save lives but also raises intricate questions. Under the compulsory licensing process, a government can under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules bypass a patent owner's rights after three years and order the manufacture and sale of life-saving medicines at much cheaper cost than by obtaining the medicine from...