It was due to a civil society struggle that the government only last year removed the bar on outsiders from participating in the social audit of projects executed under its showcase legislation of MGNREGA. Barring Andhra Pradesh, no state has so far implemented this reform. Yet, in its report for the ongoing universal periodic review (UPR) before the UN Human Rights Council, India cited the social audit clause in MGNREGA...

Terming a new law that raises the age of consent for sex from 16 to 18 years "undemocratic" and "regressive", a trial court feared it would act as a "tool for the police to harass minors". The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act ( PCSOA), passed by Parliament in the recently concluded session, criminalizes all sex by teenagers. "Such a move would open the floodgates for prosecution of boys for offences...

Andhra HC judgment redefines the complex relationship between religion, caste and reservations The recent judgment of the Andhra Pradesh high court that sets aside a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for “socially and educationally backward classes of citizens belonging to minorities” within the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs reminds us of the contested notion of backwardness in the Indian context. Highlighting serious concerns regarding the ways in which social backwardness...

The Conflict of Interest Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha is a welcome step to control the grey areas in which “public private partnerships” are conducted. AMONG the many things that have proliferated in the economic boom of the brash new India is conflict of interest. So widespread, comprehensive and many-tentacled has this feature become that it is often no longer even recognised to exist, much less to be a...

Political parties across the spectrum get into a tangle over an innocuous cartoon in a school textbook THE textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) are in the news again. This time, it is not history but political science textbooks that managed to get almost all Members of Parliament on their feet on an emotive issue and for reasons that defied logic. One day before the 60th...