The Lokpal Bill is in danger of skidding off the rails. As it is introduced in Parliament, eminent activist Aruna Roy tells Shoma Chaudhury why we should not rush into it. THE LOKPAL BILL is now being debated in Parliament, almost 40 years after the idea was first mooted. Unfortunately, parented on one side by decades of wilful government inertia and, on the other, by the panicked hustle of ‘Team...

Important draft legislation was recently unveiled in Rajasthan that would impose serious punishment for ‘witch-hunting’. Getting legislators to sign off on the bill, however, will prove difficult. Over the years, the women’s movement in Rajasthan has had some success in making violence against women into an important political issue. Activists have forced political parties and governments to demonstrate that they are addressing this constituency, which the media has dubbed ‘Mahila Sangathan’....

Mahtab Alam examines the trouble with the steel project and suggests a way out THE PROPOSED mega Posco project and the anti-Posco movement are back in the news after the violence at the proposed site on 16 July. According to the reports I got, on that day, eight platoons of police attacked and lathicharged peaceful protesters in the village of Nuagaon, Jagatsinghpur district, Odisha. The protesters, despite being mostly women, were...

“Freedom from fear” and “Punishment-free zone” read the slogans on the school walls. These signify the end of corporal punishment. They take on a different meaning, though, when schools are occupied by the police, as they are around Dhinkia and Govindpur, the villages resisting the State's takeover of their farmland for Posco's mega power and steel project ( The Hindu , July 13-14). Children here grabbed national attention when they joined...

This is a unique situation. For governments, development authorities, lenders and borrowers alike. On Wednesday, a Supreme Court (SC) Bench headed by Justice GS Singhvi upheld a verdict of the Allahabad High Court that quashed acquisition of 176 hectares of land from farmers in Greater Noida stating that the authorities were “sub-serving” private builders in the name of public interest. Land purchased from the government was always considered ‘clean’. This verdict,...