-The Hindu   If Gujarat is a model, then the real toppers in development indicators, like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, must be supermodels In an earlier article published on this page ("The Gujarat Muddle," April 11, 2014), I pointed out that Gujarat's development achievements were hardly "model" class. This is pretty firm ground: the same point has been made by a long list of eminent economists. Yet confusion persists, so I decided to...

-The Hindu Long list of agents against free expression Censorship across the country is on the rise with as many as 52 instances being recorded in the first quarter of 2014. Releasing data on censorship for the first three months of this year, media watch group, The Hoot, said this averaged a little less than one a day. The agents against free expression were not just the state or fringe groups. The...

-The Hindu     Governments have ritually abused the latitude granted by the Indian Penal Code and the Constitution to harass, intimidate and arrest scores of writers, journalists and artists It is common knowledge that Article 19 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution lays down that "all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression"; it is also common knowledge that this fundamental right is not absolute, as the immediately following...

-The Hindu Allahabad: Breaking the chains of tradition, more than a hundred widows who live an isolated and tough life in the narrow alleys of Varanasi, on Monday shared a common platform with Hindu seers and scholars, and even dined with them. The seers and sanskrit scholars converged on the holy city to explore ways of addressing the plight of widows. They quoted from the Dharm Shastra and Samaj Shastra, ancient Hindu...

-The Hindu ‘Al vida’, said Afzal Guru to his executioner, who had himself bid him good bye with the same words a few seconds earlier. And then as the executioner pulled a lever, Afzal’s frame hung from the gallows. “He was dead in a minute, though”, as per the jail norms, the body was kept hanging for a full half hour, said an official who witnessed the hanging. Thereafter Afzal’s body was...