-The Hindu   It speaks to the deeply divisive times we live in that Team Anna activist and Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan was savagely assaulted in his own chamber — and in the full glare of television cameras — for the “crime” of saying something that his attackers disapproved of. In the past, intolerant groups who seem to have no problem breaking the law with impunity, have targeted writers, artists, journalists,...

-The Hindu In many ways, Vachathi was a test case: not so much for the judiciary as for India's social conscience. In June 1992, this tribal hamlet in northern Tamil Nadu was witness to what brutal law enforcers and callous government officials could do to the poor and the powerless. Women were raped, men were assaulted, houses were looted and destroyed, and cattle were killed, all in the name of upholding...

The police action against Dalits in Paramakudi leaves indelible scars on the psyche of the oppressed people all over Tamil Nadu. The Tamil Nadu Police, in its modern avatar, reflects a glorious tradition of over a century and a half. It was the only force to embark on State-sponsored modernisation in the early 1990s which was pioneered by me during my first tenure as Chief Minister from 1991 to 1996....

At the Independent People's Tribunal in Delhi last year, a young tribal man, Lingaram Kodopi, had a question: "My family is well off, but they [security forces] accuse me of being a Naxalite. Why can't we adivasis wear a good watch or drive a car without being picked up by the police?" In September 2009, 10 men with AK-47s entered Kodopi's home in Sameli, Dantewada, Chhattisgarh. They wanted to know...

Have you heard of the Yangtze River Dolphin? For the longest time, it used to be found along 1,700 kilometres of the middle and lower reaches of the mighty Chinese river. The Baiji, as it is known, was white finned, a little over two metres long, had poor eyesight and relied mainly on sonar for navigation. A few decades ago, as populations along the river grew, as shipping traffic rose,...