-The Hindu Stereotypical government policies and global approaches persist in family planning programmes. Urmila is a 40-year-old domestic worker in western Uttar Pradesh. The mother of six children, all girls, she is now pregnant again and is keen on carrying on with the pregnancy. Her husband is unemployed and is an alcoholic. His relatives have assured her that they will help her to bring up the child and have also hinted...
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Disturbing trends in judicial activism-TR Andhyarujina
-The Hindu Public Interest Litigation is a good thing when it is used to enforce the rights of the disadvantaged. But it has now been diluted to interfere with the power of the government to take decisions on a range of policy matters Judicial activism is not an easy concept to define. It means different things to different persons. Critics denounce judicial decisions as activist when they do not agree with them....
More »Learning from a controversy-Sukhdeo Thorat
-The Hindu The insights in the NCERT cartoon report can help to make the curriculum and the classroom more inclusive While the NCERT textbooks report has generated much heat, it has also shed positive light on the issue. It is time to reflect on this side of the debate and deal with the questions it raises. The committee’s mandate was to identify educationally inappropriate materials in textbooks and suggest alternatives, if necessary. The...
More »A textbook case of exclusion-Rupa Viswanath
To replace ‘Dalit’ with ‘SC’, as the Thorat panel recommends, is to be inaccurate A commission led by S.K. Thorat, and charged with reviewing NCERT political science textbooks in the wake of the cartoon controversy, has singled out a specific word in the text for removal. All instances of the word “Dalit”, it is recommended, should be replaced with “Scheduled Caste” (SC). The blogosphere is rife with speculation on the motivation...
More »UN-backed commission finds that punitive laws stifling global AIDS response
-The United Nations Punitive laws and human rights abuses are costing lives, wasting money and stifling the global AIDS response, according to a report released today by a United Nations-backed commission. Entitled HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights and Health, the report by the Global Commission on HIV and the Law – made up of former heads of state and leading legal, human rights and HIV experts, and supported by the UN...
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