The people are not always right - though they usually are. Socrates was sentenced to death in a direct democracy by popular vote in a popular jury. He was the greatest man Athens ever produced and was unquestionably one of the noblest men of all time. The Treaty of Versailles was a link in the chain of events that led to the decline of the great civilisation of Europe. Yet...

-The Timee of India   Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology (Capart) had given a grant of Rs 1 lakh to Anna Hazare-led Hind Swaraj Trust (HST) for watershed development in three villages in 1999-2001 but more than 90% of the money was spent on honorarium, travelling, printing and stationery, the Supreme Court was told.  Responding to a PIL filed by advocate M L Sharma alleging that large amounts of...

Greedy lawyers and lack of awareness condemn women undertrials twice over Kanimozhis All?     Total number of male and female convicts in India: 1,23,941; Number of undertrials: 2,50,204     Number of female prisoners: 15,406; Female undertrials: 10,687     Female prisoners compromise 4.1 per cent of the prison population     469 women convicts with their 556 children and 1,196 undertrials with their 1,314 children are in prisons across the country     Official capacity of prisons in...

The much-vaunted NREGA has defaulted on many of its promises “There are many households in our village who have NREGA cards but have not sought work for over two years,” says 32-year-old Umesh Kumar, gram pradhan of Bhainswal village, in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh. In fact, Kumar recounts having to actually go around persuading people to come for work “whenever we get projects for implementation under NREGA”. This first-time...

-The Hoot The brutally fatal silencing of three journalists along with the sharp rise in censorship of content in online media and the increasing cases of defamation marked the deterioration of the climate for free speech across India in 2011. Attacks on journalists continued to be high, with 24 recorded instances even as writers, journalists and lawyers bore the brunt of the intolerance of vigilante groups to dissenting opinion. The Free Speech...