Indian civil society was dismayed and horror-struck when human rights activist Dr Binayak Sen, who has spent over three decades caring for the poor in tribal areas of central India, was sentenced to life imprisonment for ‘sedition’ along with two others, Piyush Guha and Narayan Sanyal by a Raipur Sessions Court judge.  Protests are taking place everywhere in the country and the members of India’s vibrant civil society, peoples’ movements,...

Maoist leader was himself charged with sedition only as an after-thought Narayan Sanyal is a 74-year-old man with white hair parted to one side and fibromatosis in both hands. His arrest memo notes that he wears dentures, has spots on his body and smokes cigarettes. “My health is not going well, arthritis is a new thing catching up, age is telling,” he writes in a letter addressed to a ‘Dear...

Court directs State department to pay full salary to employee who was relieved from service Says termination of his services clearly in contravention of Section 47 of the PWD Act Mental illness or retardation can be brought within the term ‘disability' under sections of the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995 (PWD Act), the Madras High Court has said. Directing a State government department to pay...

For some reason, governments - as well as the development ''industry'' as a whole - have always had a tendency to look for universal panaceas, particular silver bullets that will solve all or most of their implementation problems and somehow achieve the development project for them. The latest such initiative bullet that seems to have been accepted as a silver bullet is the Unique Identification Project, which is now seen...

The Centre is expected to announce a new pharma policy in the next few months. The ministry of chemicals and fertilisers has discussed with concerned stakeholders and will seek further inputs on the matter before placing the draft note to a group of ministers (GoM) for final touches, chemicals and fertilisers minister MK Azhagiri said on Wednesday. Hinting this at a conference on ‘Intellectual Property Rights: Challenges and way forward for...