-The Hindu Governments have ritually abused the latitude granted by the Indian Penal Code and the Constitution to harass, intimidate and arrest scores of writers, journalists and artists It is common knowledge that Article 19 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution lays down that "all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression"; it is also common knowledge that this fundamental right is not absolute, as the immediately following...
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As deadline nears, UN officials call for accelerating progress on anti-poverty goals
-The United Nations With the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) looming, United Nations officials today called on countries to accelerate action to meet the global targets that have spurred the fastest reduction of poverty in human history. "With less than 830 days to go before the MDG target date, now is the time to accelerate progress - not give up," said the Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Helen...
More »Road kill: The national emergency in plain sight -Sandip Roy
-FirstPost.com It's a daily scene at the busy Gariahat crossing in Kolkata. Traffic is barreling down in all directions. Minibuses make screeching right turns at breakneck speed. The tramline in the middle of the street has been dug up and is a giant crater occupying half the road, marked by corrugated metal walls and little red flags. Taxis and autos dodge buses to try and squeeze by the construction onto a...
More »A lifeline that rural India cannot do without -Raman Kataria and Yogesh Jain
-The Hindu The huge deficit in blood availability outside urban centres must jolt the government into legalising unbanked blood supply Twenty-year-old Putul, living in a village 70 km from a district headquarters town in Chhattisgarh, had been in labour for two days and a night. It was her first pregnancy. In order to hasten labour, the local quack administered several injections that increased her uterine contractions. Forty hours after the onset of...
More »Better, but still lagging behind-Govindan Nair
-The Hindu It is premature to speak of a ‘new Bihar' based on the experience of a compressed time-frame Rekindling Governance and Development: Edited by N. K. Singh, Nicholas Stern; HarperCollins Publishers, A-53, Sector 57, Noida-201301. Rs. 699. The editors of this book have gathered a panel of stellar luminaries to valorise their notion of ‘The New Bihar'. Learned, laudatory essays extol the sea-change wrought by the NDA government since it came to...
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