-The Hindu Birth certificates not needed any more; grievances will be now handled on Twitter. In a move to speed up and simplify the passport delivery process, the government on Friday announced a series of steps that would help single mothers, orphaned children, and sadhus obtain passports with ease. Announcing the changes that will relax the need for birth certificates in the application process, Minister of State for External Affairs General (retd.) V.K....
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Rights for the rightful owners -Brinda Karat
-The Hindu On the tenth anniversary of the historic passage of the Forest Rights Act, tribal resistance to defend their rights is growing even as government after government tries to dilute its provisions On this day 10 years ago the historic Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act was passed in the Lok Sabha. Its conception and passage was the result of the decades of struggles and...
More »Passports don't need details of spouse or father: Panel to MEA -Shalini Nair
-The Indian Express In its report submitted to the MEA, the panel has said that in keeping with global practices, the ministry must consider doing away with these details. New Delhi: IN VIEW of complaints, especially from women, of procedural harassment in passport offices, an inter-ministerial panel has recommended that the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) should do away with the practice of printing details of a person’s father, mother or spouse...
More »At Passport Office, Women Encounter Discriminatory, Humiliating Procedures -Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar
-TheWire.in Married women are required to submit a marriage certificate or affidavit at the time of passport creation or renewal, though these documents are not demanded of married men. New Delhi: Despite senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj being at the helm in the Ministry of External Affairs, women passport applicants continue to face discrimination and harassment at regional passport offices and seva kendras across the country. Women applying for passports are finding that...
More »The growing tribe of think tanks in India
-Livemint.com The quality of output and influence in policymaking have been disappointing In order to give a flavour of how important think tanks in Washington DC have been to the policymakers, Peter W. Singer, an American political scientist, once wrote: “...when President Reagan took office in 1981, he quickly gave every member of his cabinet an 1,100-page book from the Heritage Foundation, Mandate for Leadership, that provided an outline for conservative principles...
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