The sentencing of Dr. Binayak Sen involves unverified charges, and unreasonable and unconstitutional findings. The constitutional validity of the charges of sedition and conspiracy that were used to implicate rights activists such as Binayak Sen merely for their anti-establishment political thoughts needs to be challenged. The action ridicules the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. The sections of the Indian Penal Code that deal with “conspiracy to wage war against the government”...

While human rights activists across the world express their shock and outrage at Binayak Sen's life imprisonment sentence, one of the biggest blows will be felt by his alma mater, Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore. Until the verdict, the gentle doctor was busy, among other things, with a new project which could usher in a new light for healthcare education in India. Following the Social Determinants of Health report of...

The directorate of education (DoE) has already framed the draft rules for the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, in Goa and has forwarded the rules to the state government for its vetting by the law department. Sources in the DoE said that the draft rules, once finalized, will then be forwarded to the state government for its approval and for the...

Mai-baap. That is how poor Indians referred to the state ever since independence. The benign provider looking after its subjects like the rajas of yore. But, today, the people have started demanding accountability from the mai-baap. Why? Because a clutch of new laws, like the Right To Information Act (RTI) and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), are moving the government's developmental promises beyond "the realm of a privilege that...

The historian Ramachandra Guha has famously described India as a fifty-fifty democracy. But even admirers of India as a functioning democracy will perhaps be forced to admit that certain events in 2010 forced the needle to move beyond fifty against democracy. Threats to democracy and democratic rights have never been as evident, and as powerful, since the dark days of the Emergency in 1975-76 as they were in the course...