At least two cases of hunger deaths have been reported from Jabalpur district of MP and Chittorgarh district of Rajasthan in the past few weeks. The two states are run by different political parties-- the BJP and the Congress-- but there is quite a lot common in the victims’ circumstances. Both families were among the poorest in their villages but were not included in the BPL list and both the...

During the last three years, two subjects have been consuming the attention of the world community almost to the exclusion of other equally important subjects. One is the financial crisis, which had threatened to lead to a meltdown of the global economy, and the other is the threat to orderly climate changes in the world. As we step into the second decade of the 21st century, the global financial crisis...

Bombay High Court today noted the rise in murderous attacks on social activists and asked the state police chief to report within a week what the government was doing to protect them. Yesterday, Right to Information (RTI) activist Satish Shetty, 38, was stabbed to death by two attackers close to his home at Talegaon Dabhade near Pune, where he had exposed a series of land scams. Last week, two gunmen had fired...

A study finds ambiguities in the law to protect women against domestic violence and lack of knowledge of the Act among relief providers. ON October 26, 2006, Parliament enacted the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, not only to recognise the hitherto unrecognised and latent forms of violence against women in domestic relationships (in and outside marriage), but also to provide a civil remedy to ameliorate the conditions of...

Much like the tsunami waves that devastated many coastal areas five years ago, the closing weeks of 2009 saw an ill wind sweeping across many of our democratic institutions, highlighting that beneath the veneer of the nation’s aspirations towards great power status was a crumbling institutional core. To look at the fourth estate first. The preface to the Press Council of India’s “Norms of Journalistic Conduct” has a section that...