Let down by governments that curb free speech, we have become our own hecklers In free speech jurisprudence, there is a concept called a “heckler’s veto”. It means the ability — but not the right — of a private actor, the heckler, to be loud and obnoxious enough to obscure the free speech of others. By pattern, a heckler is someone who is unable to defend his argument by legitimate use...

A Cabinet panel headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will decide on Wednesday if the government should spend nearly Rs 15,000 crore more to duplicate an ongoing exercise to capture biometric data. The government had earlier authorised the Registrar General of India under the home ministry to create the National Population Register, a task that required RGI to collect biometric data of nearly one billion people and get them an...

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...

One of the great achievements of India is our free and vibrant press. This is an accomplishment of direct relevance to the working of democracy. Authoritarianism flourishes not only by stifling opposition, but also by systematically suppressing information. The survival and flowering of Indian democracy owes a great deal to the freedom and vigour of our press. There are so many occasions when, sitting even in Europe or in America,...

The lone Indian activist on the 2011 TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, Aruna Roy has been more successful than most,  when it comes to getting the government’s attention. The Chennai-born former bureaucrat who was an instrumental force behind the revolutionary Right to Information Act has also been credited by the government for “incorporating strong citizen entitlements” in the ambitious National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). A constant...