-The Hindu Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, espousing the cause of Muslims, has knocked at the doors of the Supreme Court seeking compensation for the community’s youth who were incarcerated in jails for years as accused in bomb blast cases but were let off subsequently. A Bench of Justices T. S. Thakur and Ibrahim Kalifulla, after hearing senior counsel Amarendra Saran, agreed to examine the plight of such youth who were jailed for six or...

-The Times of India India, dubbed 'the melting pot of cultural diversity', is also home to the world's 11th largest population of 'Internally Displaced People' (IDP). These people are forced to relocate fearing religious, ethnic or other persecution in conflict-induced situations. India and Turkey are the only 'stable' country in the list of 12 nations which have witnessed forced migration of a million or more. Others are either ravaged by ongoing...

-The Hindu The Central government’s decision to amend the Constitution to provide for reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in promotions in government service is a welcome move, though it is fraught with risks if implemented without careful thought and adequate groundwork. The SCs and STs are grossly under-represented in the upper echelons of government — as indeed they are in upper management elsewhere — and every effort must be...

-The Hindu The government has issued a warning letter to Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), asking it to be careful while conducting clinical trials so as to ensure that discrepancies and violations are not repeated in future. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had suspended the Phase-V post licensure clinical trial being conducted by PATH, an international non-governmental organisation, in Khamman (Andhra Pradesh) and Vadodara (Gujarat) for Human Papilloma...

-The Hindu Stereotypical government policies and global approaches persist in family planning programmes. Urmila is a 40-year-old domestic worker in western Uttar Pradesh. The mother of six children, all girls, she is now pregnant again and is keen on carrying on with the pregnancy. Her husband is unemployed and is an alcoholic. His relatives have assured her that they will help her to bring up the child and have also hinted...