-The Hindu Despite its uneven history in India, decentralisation is vital to strengthen participatory democracy, facilitate responsive governance and enable public service delivery. Much has been written on decentralisation in India though, on the ground, there is very little to show despite the 73rd and 74th Constitutional amendments. The rationale for decentralisation comes from the need to strengthen participatory democracy, facilitate responsive governance, ensure greater accountability and enable public service delivery according to...

-Economic and Political Weekly Independence of the judiciary is not the issue in the current stand-off; it is control over Appointments. The decision of the Supreme Court striking down the Constitution 99th Amendment and the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) marks a high confrontation level between the executive and the judiciary. One of the first actions of the Narendra Modi government was to bring into being the NJAC to make Appointments to...

-Frontline In Rajasthan, the abysmal state of school education has forced pupils, particularly girls, to come out in protest against the shortage of teachers and lack of infrastructure. IT was just over a year ago, on Gandhi Jayanti 2014, that girls of the senior secondary school of the town of Bhim in Rajasthan went on strike. The young, fresh-faced and neatly groomed girls were far removed from anyone’s idea of potentially rowdy...

-The Times of india The stand-off between the judiciary and the legislature over the procedure for appointing judges comes at a time when the country's 24 high courts have 397 pending vacancies for judges, and what's more, eight of them having acting chief justices. It is not clear at this point whether these vacancies can now be filled through the earlier collegium system or that will have to wait till the system...

-Livemint.com The five-judge bench, however, says that it would seek the assistance of lawyers to improve the collegium system; this will be heard on 3 November New Delhi: In a huge blow to the government’s plan to overhaul the judicial Appointment process, the Supreme Court on Friday struck down the constitutional amendment which introduced a six-member panel for selecting judges to the higher judiciary, declaring it unconstitutional. It also struck down...