-The Hindu The Supreme Court’s unyielding criticism of the government for not eradicating the practice of manual scavenging was the springboard for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to introduce the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012 in the Lok Sabha on September 3. Welcomed as a panacea for the historically iniquitous, caste-ordained practice of manually handling human waste, the new Bill indicates renewed commitment...

-The Economic Times Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken charge of the UPA's initiatives to directly transfer welfare benefits and subsidies into individual beneficiaries' bank accounts - a system that would plug the rampant leakages of funds earmarked for the poor via schemes such as NREGA on which the government spends over 3,00,000 crore annually. A new ministerial co-ordination committee under the PM would now fast-track the architecture for cash transfers while...

-The Telegraph A one-member committee formed to fix responsibility on individuals for “derogatory” political cartoons in some NCERT school textbooks has refused to blame anyone, highly placed sources have told The Telegraph. The committee, set up by the human resource development ministry under its former secretary B.S. Baswan, has found that officials and experts had followed set guidelines and procedure in preparing these books and had no “ill intentions”. “It said the books...

-Frontline Reinstatement of the fundamental right to property in the Constitution will on its own do little to protect the interests of poor peasants and traditional communities.  The Indian Constitution adopted in 1950 guaranteed a set of fundamental rights that cannot be abridged by Central or State laws. One of these fundamental rights was the right to property enshrined in Articles 19(1)(f) and 31. Article 19(1)(f) guaranteed to all citizens the right...

-The Hindu More than a political consensus, it is hard data on the absence of marginalised sections from the higher bureaucracy that will give legitimacy to the measure The decision to amend the Constitution to ensure reservation in promotions for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes has been the subject of much scrutiny without paying sufficient critical attention to the discourse of the Supreme Court on the issue. While the Court...