The popular impression is that starvation deaths happen mainly because the information about potential victims fails to reach authorities. But can it amount to murder if a starvation death is caused despite adequate warning? A recent Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report tells us a story of corruption and negligence leading to starvation and death in Odisha. Worse still is the fact that many more villagers await the same fate...

-Express News Service Branding the Adarsh scam a “classic example of the fence eating the crops” and “how a select and powerful elite could collude to subvert rules and regulations for personal benefit” , the Comptroller and Auditor General has slammed the government and officials in its audit of the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society. The report, that was tabled in the Assembly on Friday, called the entire Adarsh episode a remarkable case...

-The Hindustan Times   With the Right to Education Act (RTE) setting aside 25% of seats in schools for students of the Economically Weaker Section (EWS), heads of minority institutions in the city have expressed their displeasure at the reservation. Claiming that a substantial percentage of the seats was already being given to students of the minority EWS community, principals of several schools such as St. Columba's, Carmel Convent School and Guru...

-BBC   A report on a controversial bill to set up an anti-corruption watchdog has been submitted in India's parliament. The bill was tabled in parliament in August but was sent to a panel of MPs after protests from anti-corruption activists who said it was too weak. Anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare has rejected the new draft too, saying it does not go far enough as it does not include lower-level bureaucracy. He has announced plans...

A report of the National People's Tribunal on the 2008 riots in Kandhamal, Orissa, is out. The report that runs into 197 pages points out that the brutality of the violence falls within the definition of 'torture' under international law, particularly the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.   According to the tribunal, headed by Justice A P Shah, communal forces used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation...