The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...

Only 18 per cent cases registered under dowry death charges end up in conviction, statistics available with the Delhi Police reveal. According to the Delhi Police figures, a dowry death is reported in the city every third day. Of the 681 people arrested under the sections of dowry death in Delhi, only 207 were convicted of the charges and sent to jail. Around four years ago, the Delhi Police had issued a...

Meena Kandasamy, one of Chennai’s well-known activists and poets, was recently in Hyderabad delivering a few lectures at NALSAR and other institutions about Ambedkar, when she heard about a beef festival at Osmania University being organised by the Telengana Students’ Association and the Progressive Students Union. Several students and teachers had gathered to support the event organised by the dalit students and also as a symbol of admonishing cultural oppression from...

I recently wrote in this column about two cases where individual efforts to fight corruption and inefficient system brought results. Alas, it is fraught with difficulties and sometimes danger. Manjulaben Vaghela lives in Pardhol village in Dascroi taluka. She for past four years has been trying to get an electricity connection for her chhapra. Starting with the GEB, she has appealed to everyone concerned including the CM's secretariat. This has caused her...

-The Times of India GUWAHATI: Hundreds of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) activists were prevented by police from staging a demonstration in the Golaghat district on Saturday. KMSS claimed that four of their members were injured when police used force to stop their procession, which was heading towards the sub-division office. The activists were also detained. "We were about 300 people in the procession. We planned the protest after the district administration...