An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...

Despite 60 years of Constitutional guarantees and two decades after the signing of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, India's children still continue to face grave violation of their basic rights, an independent social audit has revealed. “We do not have a National Policy for Children defining the ‘child'. In fact, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has time and again recommended that a...

For some people, life is all about a fried hollow globe with a thumb-jabbed hole in the middle. Hot, sour, sweetened or served in dahi (curd), phuchkas are a part of growing up. Unfortunately, the men who sell the phuchkas don’t know where the next jab will come from. Their thumb, or the sudden snatch of officials. Reason: there’s no law to protect them from harassment for selling their stuff on streets. But things...

The government is in a dilemma as it grapples with the expanded scope of India’s proposed privacy law: Should it scrap all existing provisions on lawful interceptions and fold them under the new legislation, or strengthen the various laws under different ministries so their turfs remain undisturbed? The right to privacy Bill aims to uphold the right of all Indians against any misuse of their personal information, interception of personal communication,...

-The Economic Times   Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid's remarks on the need to revisit the Right to Information (RTI) Act, on the purported reason that its 'misuse' was hampering 'institutional efficiency', displays the discomfort amongst the political and bureaucratic classes over an Act that has unprecedentedly empowered ordinary citizens. Talk of amending the Act on those and similar grounds is nothing but those classes seeking to disempower citizens, and return to...