-Hindustan Times A study shows glaring gaps in Indian policing — from unfilled quotas of SC/STs to a dip in women officers. The rule of law has two extremes: a failed State and a police State. A failed State loses control over law and order as its monopoly slips over the use of physical force. The latter commands complete control, but ends up abusing State machinery for repression. Both extremes suffer...

-The Hindu Trend is towards control of content The production of media content and its distribution are becoming increasingly combined and concentrated in the hands of a few, finds the Media Ownership Monitor (MOM), a research project carried out in India over the past six months by Reporters Without Borders and the Delhi-based digital media company DataLEADS. The study, presented in Delhi on Wednesday, also assesses the media space as a narrow one,...

-The Hindu Opposition parties must make a new anti-torture legislation part of their common programme Custodial torture is global, old and stubborn. Dismemberment was a method of torture practised with vigour in ancient India, crushing-by-elephant-foot another. The Arthashastra prescribes mental torture through swear-words with or without physical assaults. Death by a thousand cuts was ancient China’s speciality. The Tang Code (652 CE) describes judicial torture in detail. Ancient Japanese methods of torture...

-The Hindu The authority of Adam Smith is frequently invoked by supporters of the free market, who argue for extending the market forces to all conceivable goods and services and eliminating any kind of government intervention in markets. However, Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations make it clear that he was not a laissez faire or free market...

-TheWire.in Mexican economist David Barkin on India's neoliberal economics, growing inequalities, agrarian distress and more. David Barkin is Professor of Economics at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. He received his doctorate in economics from Yale University and was awarded the National Prize in Political Economics in 1979 for his analysis of inflation in Mexico. His research has focused on the development of an alternative to the capitalist economic model. In an...