Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce postpones event after ABVP protests screening of Sanjay Kak’s Kashmir film Close on the heels of the cancellation of author Salman Rushdie’s visit to the 7th Jaipur Literature Festival due to the storm over The Satanic Verses, documentary filmmaker Sanjay Kak had to bear the brunt of Hindu fundamentalists. “Voices of Kashmir”, a seminar at the Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce, Pune, stands indefinitely postponed...

-ANI Defending the decision to provide minority (Muslim) reservation, Law Minister, Salman Khurshid on Sunday said that the Central Government had powers to grant quota to backwards castes of minority communities within the Hindu backward caste quota. The Election Commission has stayed the government decision to grant 4.5 percent reservation to minorities (Muslims) in government jobs and educational institutions due to ongoing state polls. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has opposed the move, contending...

-PTI   At a time when the issue of quota for backward class Muslims has stirred a political controversy, National Minority Commission chief Wajahat Habibullah has made a strong plea for granting Scheduled Caste status to Muslim and Christian Dalits to get them reservation benefits.  Referring to the Constitution Order of 1950 that asks for inclusion of those Dalits, who converted to Buddhism and Sikhism in the SC category, Habibullah said, "Our case...

-The Economic Times The charges of embezzlement of funds for the rural employment scheme may be contributing to the political battle between the Congress and the BSP in Uttar Pradesh, but it appears that, in real terms, political wrangling does not have any significant effect on its implementation. According to a study by the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, the UP government's lack of ownership of the programme, along with low...

Questionable drug trials on mentally challenged persons by doctors in Indore emphasise the need for strict enforcement of medical ethics. IN what appears to be a page out of Robin Cook's medical thriller, government and private doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, reportedly carried out clinical trials of various medicines on some 233 patients who had gone to them seeking psychiatric treatment. As in Cook's famous book Coma, in which a medical...