Rejecting the government's proposal to amend Section 300 of the Indian Penal Code to include ‘honour killings' within the definition of murder on the ground that the existing provisions are adequate to take care of the situations leading to such killings, the Law Commission has drafted fresh legislation that seeks to declare such panchayats unlawful. The Prohibition of Unlawful Assembly (Interference with the Freedom of Matrimonial Alliances) Bill, 2011 proposes no...

As many as 68 families who lost relatives in the AMRI Dhakuria fire met at the Nandan complex this morning to raise Safety awareness but some were unable to mask the anger at police’s inability to arrest anyone on duty that night. “I still can’t forget how the security personnel kept insisting that the smoke could never enter the ICU, where my father was. He was a cardiac patient and his...

-The Telegraph The Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti has rejected an IIT expert’s proposal to use a certain piano key weir technology for the Lower Subansiri power project, basing it rebuttal on its own research on the technology. Nayan Sarma, head of department of water resources in IIT Roorkee, had proposed use of the technology during a meeting with the state government, members of the expert groups and representatives of the civil society...

In the absence of legislation to protect women from sexual harassment at the workplace, the Supreme Court in 1997 laid down guidelines in the Vishaka vs State of Rajasthan in 1997. Thirteen years later, Parliament came up with the “Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010”. However, the Bill sees sexual harassment at the workplace not as a criminal offence but as a mere civil wrong, the...

The lesson for India after Durban is that it needs to formulate an approach that combines attention to industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for the problem with an embrace of its own responsibility to explore low carbon development trajectories. This is both ethically defensible and strategically wise. Ironically, India’s own domestic national approach of actively exploring “co-benefits” – policies that promote development while also yielding climate gains – suggests that it...