Kanak Dixit: We have with us Aruna Roy, from Devdungri village in Rajasthan, who has, among other things, been able to take the Right to Information (RTI) from janasunuwais, or public hearings at the village level, all the way to national legislation that encompasses all of India. It is a movement that is truly global in scale. Aruna, a question that has been troubling me quite a bit in the context...
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Women Still Trapped Below Glass Ceiling of Party Politics by Thalif Deen
The right of women to participate in political life is guaranteed by several international conventions, but transforming an abstract right into a reality requires hard work on the ground, says a new study released here. Published jointly by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) for International Affairs, the 118-page report points out that although 40 to 50 percent of members of political parties globally are women,...
More »Growing water shortages carry economic risks that are as damaging as political corruption by Brahma Chellaney
Water is the most critical of all natural resources on which modern economies depend. Water scarcity and rapid economic advance cannot go hand-in-hand. Yet, with its per-capita water availability falling to 1,582 cu m per year, India has become water-stressed. In 1960, India signed a treaty indefinitely setting aside 80% of the Indus-system waters for downstream Pakistan - the most generous water-sharing pact thus far in modern world history. Its 1996...
More »Team Anna meets EC, demands electoral reforms
-PTI Anna Hazare and his team on Thursday met the Election Commission in a bid to raise the pitch for electoral reforms and demanded that the 'right to reject' option be included in electronic voting machines. Hazare, along with his close associates Santosh Hegde, Prashant Bhushan, Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi, discussed the matter for about an hour with Chief Election Commissioner S Y Qureshi. According to Team Anna, the meeting was "very...
More »A decade of shame by Anupama Katakam
The victims of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat are still to get justice but are determined to continue the fight. SAIRABEN SANDHI and Rupa Mody sit quietly on the back benches at the Metropolitan Magistrate's Court in Ahmedabad watching the proceedings in the Zakia Jafri case. Both the women have witnessed immense tragedy. One saw her son killed, while the other has been searching for her missing son for the...
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