-The Hindu When an electoral system structurally discriminates against particular categories such as persons with disabilities, it is tantamount to a failure of the democracy as a whole The citizens of India are in the process of casting their votes in what is being widely hailed as the largest election in human history. By sheer size, the 16th Lok Sabha elections signal a triumph not only for India, but for democratic exercises...
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The only good idea
-The Business Standard Government slowness may have scuttled Aadhaar With the declaration that the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Nandan Nilekani, will stand as a Congress candidate in the coming Lok Sabha elections from a constituency in Bangalore, attention has once again been focused on the Aadhaar project. Aadhaar is almost at its target of enrolling 600 million people nationwide; Mr Nilekani says that the UIDAI has now got...
More »Compulsion by stealth-R Ramakumar
-The Hindu The UPA government's response to questions on Aadhaar's voluntariness continues to be marked by ‘intentional ambiguity.' Compulsion by stealth is used to camouflage the use of Aadhaar as a neo-liberal policy tool "This debate is ... about our specific disagreement on the meaning of that one word," i.e. "the Government now seek to persuade us that ‘voluntary' actually means ‘compulsory'." That was Nick Clegg in the United Kingdom's House of Commons...
More »Unlearning undemocratic values-Sukhadeo Thorat
-The Hindu India's long-standing legacies of caste, gender and class antagonism replicate on campuses as well. As higher education moves forward, it does so on these social cleavages The brutal sexual attack on a young woman in Delhi, in 2012, and a savage attack on a girl student of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on its campus this year are just two examples of extreme violence that have shocked the nation. Acts of...
More »The Unbearable Wrongness Of Koushal vs Naz Foundation -Gautam Bhatia
-Outlook Today's Supreme Court judgment that reverses the Delhi High Court judgment of 2009 is both constitutionally preposterous and morally egregious "If there is one constitutional tenet that can be said to be underlying theme of the Indian Constitution, it is that of ‘inclusiveness'. This Court believes that Indian Constitution reflects this value deeply ingrained in Indian society, nurtured over several generations... Where society can display inclusiveness...
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