As it is drafted, the Bill actually deprives people, and the State governments, of existing rights on multiple counts. The Food Security Bill finalised by a Group of Ministers should not be accepted by Parliament in its present form. The overriding negative features of the proposed legislation far outweigh its positive initiatives. The framework itself is questionable since the Central government usurps all powers to decide the numbers, criteria and schemes...

Matter begins: What is the impact of the National Rural Employment Guarentee Act on rural wages? That is the question that the pundits are asking today. It's a query which feeds into a larger question. Six years have passed since NREGA became a legal reality. What is its village-level impact? It's a complex question to answer. NREGA undertakes to provide employment to anyone who asks for it. Which makes it...

The draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill 2011, proposed by the NAC, has attracted welcome debate. Any legislative measure, intended to correct a historical wrong, should indeed be subject to the closest scrutiny to improve and strengthen it. For if we get this right it can help realise, far better than we have so far, the constitutional guarantees of equality before the law. This bill is built on India’s...

A sensational story in Hindustan Times about surgeons in Indore performing hundreds of sex change operations on children turns out to be false and misleading. An investigation.   Last month, a Hindustan Times front page report claiming that Indore doctors were converting hundreds of baby girls into baby boys sent shock waves through the system, with everyone from the Prime Minister's Office to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights...

If there is one government programme that is beyond scrutiny, it surely is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The scheme, which has attracted criticism on economic grounds by commentators and economists alike, has ample political backing. While the intent behind the scheme is beyond reproach, in practice, it’s yet to meet its promise. This is partly due to problems during implementation. Chief among this is the level...