-The Telegraph Meghalaya chief minister today called for a Legislation that would protect students from the Northeast from “insensitive behaviour”, almost a week after his niece, Dana Sangma, killed herself in a Delhi hostel after being allegedly ill-treated by an invigilator. Speaking to reporters at the Delhi Press Club today, Sangma asserted that Dana was targeted only because of her background. The 21-year-old, writing her second semester MBA examination at Amity Business School...

When India embarked on its “unique ID” project in the fall of 2010, pledging to distribute unique 12-digit numbers to 1.2 billion people, the hope was that hundreds of millions of Indians who don’t have a passport, driver’s license or other credible identity document would get one – and with it, a ticket to essential government and private sector services. A new survey led by Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New...

If the Bill seeking to protect children from sexual offences is passed by Parliament in the form in which it was cleared last week by the Cabinet, then there will be a direct but unstated conflict between the general and special laws on rape. Under the special law proposed in the freshly revised "Protection of Children From Sexual Offences Bill" , no person below 18 years will have the legal capability...

To many Indians, the word “politician” invariably invokes familiar scenes of din and disruption in Parliament, if not the taint of corruption. Yet from time to time, a little-noticed — and perhaps rather quaint — parliamentary tradition tends to suggest that at least some of India’s MPs may have a place in their heart for issues concerning the ordinary citizen. Of the 79 private members’ bills listed today in the Lok Sabha’s...

In 2005, when the Labour Party decided to implement the National Identity Project (NIP) in the UK, it drew severe criticism from many quarters, including the Tories, who later scrapped the NIP after coming to power. A report by the London School of Economics (LSE), which stated the project is “unsafe in law” and should be regarded as a “potential danger to public interest”, was instrumental in buttressing the arguments...