-The Hindu If only laws could eliminate all that they prohibit, India would have been free of the scourge of manual scavenging decades ago. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Bill, which is to be introduced in the monsoon session of Parliament, is another attempt to prevent employment of people in the cleaning, handling or carrying of human excreta. Despite the renewed stress on rehabilitation in the...

Relates to February 28, 2002 killing of duo, whose bodies were later thrown into a fire All the surviving 109 accused in the Umta rioting case, in which two persons were killed during the post-Godhra communal riots, have been granted conditional acquittals by the Visnagar court. Mohammad Abdul Sheikh, a retired teacher, and Abdul Mansuri, were killed and later their bodies thrown into a fire during communal violence in Umta village in...

-The Deccan Herald In a decision that is likely to reveal the names of judges against whom complaints have been filed in the Law Ministry, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has directed the Law Ministry to make public the forwarding letters attached with such complaints that are forwarded to the Supreme Court and High Courts. The transparency panel gave this direction while hearing the RTI plea of activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal, who...

For not paying compensation to the kin of the victims The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has asked Chief Secretary K. Jayakumar to appear personally before it on June 11, if the State government fails to take action on the compensation recommended for endosulfan victims in Kasaragod district. The Chief Secretary should file an action-taken report on the commission's recommendations before June 4, failing which he will have to appear before it....

While freedom of speech and expression is an individual right, its actualisation often relies on a vast infrastructure of intermediaries. In the offline world, this includes newspapers, television channels, public auditoriums, etc. It is often assumed that the internet has created a more robust public sphere of speech by doing away with many structural barriers to free speech. But the fact of the matter is that even if the internet enables...