The speed and determination with which the Tamil Nadu government has been slapping its citizens right, left and centre with colonial-era laws, it would seem as if a full-fledged war of independence is raging in the fishing villages of Idinthakarai and Kudankulam along the coast of Tamil Nadu. According to findings by a team led senior journalist Sam Rajappa, in just four months between September (when the protest movement against the...

Overlooked and ignored, the problem of untouchability continues to be practised and perpetrated in the country. It is a lifetime of misery and humiliation, unimaginable for the relatively privileged but a daily reality for over one-fifth of the country’s 120 crore-plus population, as revealed succinctly in 22 short and easy to view videos under the Article 17 Campaign launched on April 14, 2012 by India Unheard, which claims to be...

Seven months after the National Integration Council (NIC) meeting in September “discussed and dumped” the National Advisory Council (NAC)-drafted ‘Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparation) Bill, civil society activists from across the country representing more than 50 organisations came together to pronounce the Bill as “dead.” They also demanded that the Union government come up with a new draft of the Bill focused on “making public...

-The Hindustan Times The country recorded a marginal fall in atrocities against Dalits in 2010 over the previous year. The conviction rate for atrocities improved by 5.5%, but what alarms is the high pendency rate of 78.7%. Though the Mayawati government ensured a drop in atrocities on SCs, evident by a fall of 1,189 cases over 2009, UP still tops the chart for such cases. The state recorded 6,272 cases forming 19.2%...

A Gujarat court today convicted 23 of the 46 accused in a 2002 riot case in which a mob torched a house where four families had taken shelter, killing 23 people. The court in Anand district will hand down the sentences on April 12 in the so-called “Ode massacre” or “Pirawali massacre”, one of the nine cases probed by the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team (SIT). This is the third Gujarat riot...