-The Hindu Ongoing agitation in Kudankulam illustrates how State criminalises popular protest To what extent will the State go to criminalise an agitation, especially a prolonged popular struggle against a project seen by the government as a vital necessity, but as a hazard by the people living in its vicinity? It will charge the protesters with grave offences such as “waging war” and “sedition” regardless of whether there is any basis. The ongoing...

India earned another dubious distinction in child mortality with the highest number of deaths of children under-five-years of age, according to a UNICEF report released in September 2012. India's toll is higher than the deaths in Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan put together. Globally, almost 19,000 children under five years of age die every day across the world a quarter of which is in India alone. India accounted for...

-The Hindu The country has shown that it is possible to have superior social outcomes at lower per capita incomes and rates of economic growth Bangladesh is very much in the news these days in our country, but for the wrong reasons. In the unfortunate Bangladesh-bashing that seems to have become somewhat of a pastime, we seem to have failed to notice the striking developmental success that it has had in the...

-The Hindustan Times As news filtered in of extended life sentences for 31 persons for the brutal slaughter 10 years ago in Naroda Patiya, a working-class suburb of Ahmedabad, my eyes clouded over. I remembered my first meetings with the traumatised survivors of the massacre in the crowded relief camps in the city, a full decade earlier. I was heartsick and stunned by their stories of incredible cruelty. I wondered if...

-The Hindustan Times The Jammu and Kashmir government’s fresh amendments have rendered the most successful institute of public transparency and accountability, state Right to Information Act, powerless, triggering sharp reactions from civil society and political parties.   Surprised state’s chief information commissioner G.R Sofi accused Chief Minister Omar Abdullah-led government of making unnecessary changes to make state information commission (SIC) a “toothless body”.   “In first place, there was no reason to come up with...