-TheWire.in Eleven years after order, none of the states have conformed to the guidelines, says a Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative report. New Delhi: Eleven years ago, on this day, the Supreme Court had issued directions to the Centre and state governments to transform their police forces into professional, accountable and efficient service units. However, a recent report shows that compliance remains far from satisfactory with none of the governments enacting laws to...

-The Indian Express RTI Act needs to be protected against attempts to dilute it. RTI activists must be made less vulnerable In April, the government of India proposed amendments to the RTI Act, one of the most empowering pieces of legislation inherited from the UPA era. The most controversial amendment pertained to Rule 12. It would allow the withdrawal of an application in case of the applicant’s death, making the job of...

-TheWire.in If the legislature is serious about introducing gender parity in personal laws, it should not focus all its energies on one particular religion. In light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to abolish instant triple talaq, a number of ostensible protectors of Muslim women in Indian politics came out in open support of the decision, lauding the cleansing of this oppressive religious practice. Of course, the government was the first to...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A wave of rare consensus swept most of the national landscape today as the Supreme Court declared the instant triple talaq unconstitutional and outlawed it by a 3:2 majority verdict. While Justices Kurian Joseph, R.F. Nariman and U.U. Lalit ruled the practice "manifestly arbitrary" and against "public order and morality", Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar and Justice S. Abdul Nazeer differed in their minority view. The minority view...

-The Hindu Business Line At an organic market in Odisha, middle-class consumers get to interact with the producers of their food and appreciate traditional knowledge systems One Sunday morning in January, I visited an organic produce market located amidst dense bougainvillea creepers and rows of trees, on the grounds of the six-decade-old CHRIstian Hospital in Bissamcuttack, a town in western Odisha’s Rayagada district. In policy and public imagination, Odisha, particularly its western districts...