With the Ruchika molestation case causing an uproar, Union Law Minister M Veerappa Moily said on Friday that the Government has decided to "fast track" cases relating to women, including those involving rape, molestation and dowry. "At the National Consultation on Judicial Reforms held recently, the Government and the Judiciary have decided to prioritise and classify cases related to women, children and the disabled...classification is an important component of the...

Democracy is, everywhere, a work in progress. Like many other countries, India has imposed electoral quotas to improve the political empowerment of women and racial-ethnic minorities – that is, it has a political system that requires women to be elected to certain leadership positions. These rules represent a form of affirmative action, but they also resemble a feature of our own Constitution that reserves space in the Senate for two representatives...

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on world leaders to attend a summit next September to boost efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek to slash a host of social ills, ranging from extreme poverty and hunger to maternal and infant mortality to lack of access to education and health care, all by 2015. “Coming amid mixed progress toward the Goals and new crises that threaten the global...

A moving report titled Gender Violence in India by Prajnya, a civil society organization, says that violence against women is on the rise in India. Close to 13.3% of total crimes against women are reported from just one state, Andhra Pradesh. (See the link below) The report, which uses the statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), tells us that honour killings are often reported as torture or caste...

A bench of the Supreme Court recently said: “When you say it is the world’s oldest profession and when you are not able to curb it by laws, why don’t you legalise it?” Really? While dealing with a PIL filed by Bachpan Bachao Andolan about large scale child trafficking in the country, a Supreme Court bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice AK Pattnaik are reported to have advised the...