Rights organisations today launched a campaign to collect a million signatures against draconian sedition laws, the kickoff coming on the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, who was among those jailed under such acts. The focus of the drive 65 years after Independence is on repealing Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code — which outlaws disaffection against the state and makes it punishable with life imprisonment. Retired judge Rajinder Sachar, among those...

It's no longer a job for politician; it's for expert in rural development Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has decided to step down as president of the governing body of the CAPART (Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology) and pave the way for its professional management, besides putting an end to political misuse that has reduced the autonomous body to a storehouse of corruption. The CAPART executive committee...

-The Telegraph The Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti has rejected an IIT expert’s proposal to use a certain piano key weir technology for the Lower Subansiri power project, basing it rebuttal on its own research on the technology. Nayan Sarma, head of department of water resources in IIT Roorkee, had proposed use of the technology during a meeting with the state government, members of the expert groups and representatives of the civil society...

In the absence of legislation to protect women from sexual harassment at the workplace, the Supreme Court in 1997 laid down guidelines in the Vishaka vs State of Rajasthan in 1997. Thirteen years later, Parliament came up with the “Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010”. However, the Bill sees sexual harassment at the workplace not as a criminal offence but as a mere civil wrong, the...

Without equality, democracy and social justice, which are three interrelated factors, secularism cannot exist as a positive value in society. I HAVE known Prof. Romila Thapar for about 45 years, most of it as a colleague at the Centre for Historical Studies of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Romila, as she is called by almost everybody – from her eight-year-old grandnephew to all of us present here – had helped to...