In opening up the retail trade to foreign equity last week, the Union government demonstrated uncharacteristic courage and conviction. While this policy measure might help dispel doubts about its ability to take decisions, it has raised a political dust-storm more intense and widespread than it had probably bargained for. No doubt, taking a view on the issue of liberalising FDI norms for multi-brand retail had been on the government’s agenda for...

-The Hindu   The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a notice to the Madhya Pradesh Chief Secretary, returnable with a report in six weeks, on allegation that 40 labourers were not traceable after heavy cranes collapsed at an under-construction cement factory in Narsingarh village in Damoh district. The NHRC was acting based on Media reports. The reports said that about 300 labourers, mostly from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, were working at...

-The Economic and Political Weekly   Media freedom is not restricted by one law but by collusion between economic and political power and big Media. The defamation case filed in a Pune court by former Press Council chairman justice P B Sawant has drawn attention to the criminal law of defamation and whether it restricts the freedom of the press. Justice Sawant was awarded Rs 100 crore in exemplary damages in the case...

Markandey Katju's forthright comments on the state of the Indian news Media and the intellectual competence of many journalists have certainly raised many hackles. One does not have to agree with everything the chairman of the Press Council of India diagnoses or prescribes to see that his observations have hit home. Nor are his concerns confined to how and in what respects journalism and many journalists go astray and let...

-The Hindu   The People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) on Sunday slammed the report of the Government-appointed expert committee on Kudankulam as being extremely flawed, premised on obsolete demographic data and opaque on the risks from sub-volcanic activity near the site or health impact on the local population. The PMANE also released a letter to Chief Minister Jayalalithaa seeking her intervention in scrapping the project. In the letter to the Chief Minister–copies of...