We have elections coming up in five states, notably giant -- thus politically crucial -- Uttar Pradesh. We have an Indian cricket team seemingly determined to eat crow. We have yet another brouhaha over Salman Rushdie. But my electricity bill is in front of me, so I want to talk about food -- and those who prepare food. What, you may well wonder, is the connection between the two? The bill is made...
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India & the sex selection conundrum by Farah Naqvi & AK Shiva Kumar
What was our immediate response to further decline in the child sex ratio in India? Within days of the provisional 2011 Census results (March-April 2011), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reconstituted the Central Supervisory Board for the Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex selection) Act 1994 , which had not met for 3 years, and on November 30, 2011 the Ministry of Women and Child Development...
More »Government plans to make rape law gender neutral by Himanshi Dhawan
The government has proposed that the offence of rape be made "gender neutral" by amending the law so that sexual assault on men can also be proceeded against under the same statute. It also plans to make specific laws on stalking and acid attacks on women. The change in the rape law is being drafted by the ministry of women and child development (WCD) as part of the criminal law (amendment)...
More »Bill on Sexual Harassment: Against Women’s Rights by Geetha KK
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...
More »Kandhamal tribunal seeks SIT to review cases by Vidya Subrahmaniam
The Kandhamal violence of 2008 “meets all the elements of crimes against humanity,” said the report of the Justice-A.P. Shah-headed National People's Tribunal on Kandhamal, which was released here on Saturday. The report recommends the constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to re-examine the First Information Reports already registered, to file fresh FIRs where necessary and to recommend remedial measures where trials had been vitiated because of intimidation of witnesses...
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