-The Indian Express Move to criminalise cyber speech will add impunity to power How to police a cyber space that has acquired the instincts of Frankenstein’s monster? In pursuit of answers, an expert committee submitted an interim report to the Union Home Ministry a couple of weeks ago. The recommended amendments to the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are noteworthy for two reasons. One, they bring within the ambit of IPC (through amendments...
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India's not-yet digital postmen -Osama Manzar
-Livemint.com While all of the post offices in India are supposed to have internet (and be digitized by the end of the year), internet connectivity is non-functional at several units Last month I read an interesting article about India’s postmen. It talked about the changing duties of postmen and the changing role of post offices. By the end of the article I was thinking of a scenario where our close to 2...
More »After starvation death case: Jharkhand minister scraps top state official's order on Aadhaar-PDS link -Prashant Pandey
-The Indian Express The order also pointed out that on April 6, the minister had written to his secretary asking for a self-contained report on how the chief secretary could issue such a direction. However, the report was never filed. Ranchi: Four days after questioning the directions given by the Jharkhand chief secretary on mandatorily linking Aadhaar to ration cards by April 5, state PDS Minister Saryu Roy Saturday passed an order...
More »Chronicle of a starvation death foretold: Why it is time to abandon Aadhaar in the ration shop -Jean Dreze
-Scroll.in The recent starvation death in Simdega epitomises a much larger problem of Aadhaar-related exclusion from the public distribution system in Jharkhand. The recent death of 11-year old Santoshi Kumari in Simdega district of Jharkhand has rightly stirred the country’s conscience. The context of this tragedy, however, is poorly understood, not least because of the Jharkhand government’s obfuscation. According to the family’s Video testimonies, Santoshi died after starving for eight days. Even...
More »Non-linking of aadhaar with ration card is denying people their right to food
During the Bengal famine of 1943-44, over 2 million people died due to starvation, diseases and malnutrition, among other things. According to scholars, the apathy of the British government was largely responsible for such a massive tragedy. Despite the enacting of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013, the situation of the downtrodden and the poor has not changed much in the country as compared to pre-Independence time. On 28...
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