Between 2009 and February 2011, at least 14 people were charged with sedition in India London: The typical citizen could be forgiven for fearing that the world’s largest democracy is hurtling towards George Orwell’s 1984 rather than 2013. In late August the government’s department of telecommunications, citing the “communal tensions” around Assam, blocked more than 300 individual web addresses, including the Twitter profile pages of some journalists. It also ordered a limit...

-Live Mint The Sonia Gandhi -led National Advisory Council (NAC) may be moving closer to formulating a pre-legislative process that will involve a thorough, time-bound discussion of Bills before they become law. “The need for such a policy of consultation is necessary to evolve from a representative democracy to a participatory, deliberative democracy, particularly for accountability to the people in the formulation of law and policy,” said the draft recommendation of NAC’s working...

-The Hindu The draft law on acquisition strikes a balance between development and justice for those who will be displaced in the process India is a rapidly industrialising economy and society with intense demands for better infrastructure from its people. The last 20 years have seen a great acceleration in this process, with India becoming one of the world’s fastest growing economies. However, for those whose lands were acquired for these purposes...

-The United Nations A new United Nations report advocates that governments use fiscal and labour market policies to reduce income inequality, maintaining that this not only leads to social benefits but will spur economic growth and development. Produced by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Trade and Development Report 2012 says that recent experience, especially in Latin America and other developing countries, suggests that progressive taxation and rising public...

-IPS News World Water Week recently concluded in Stockholm with a special emphasis on the linkages between water and food security. From the worst drought in 56 years in the United States Midwest, to the Karnataka’s drought in India, to the protracted drought in the Sahel region of West Africa, we have also seen how in our globalised world the nexus between lack of water and food security in one corner of...