A government panel has recommended the enactment of a “comprehensive, standalone law” on the so-called “honour killings”, handing equal punishment to the killers, plotters and the instigators at kangaroo courts. “The current provisions in the Indian Penal Code are inadequate in dealing with these acts of crime,” says the Planning Commission’s steering committee on women’s agency and child rights for the 12th Five-Year Plan. Its report, posted on the plan panel’s website...

Dalits, OBCs in India’s colleges are using beef as a symbol of a resurgent identity     “Non-Brahmins have evidently undergone a revolution. From being beef-eaters to have become non-beef-eaters was indeed a revolution. But if non-Brahmins underwent one revolution, Brahmins had undergone two. They gave up beef-eating, which was one revolution. To have given up meat-eating altogether and become vegetarians was another revolution.”     —B.R. Ambedkar *** The Beef Menu     Available In Kerala,...

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...

-Express News Service The Punjab government has decided to include representatives of Home Department, Advocate General’s office and some social activists, including women, as members of the security review committee for grant of protection to whistle blowers. The committee would be headed by the Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Security. The state submitted this in the Punjab and Haryana High Court through an affidavit filed by Surinder Pal Singh, SSP Security...

-IANS CHENNAI: Upset with the Tamil Nadu government for going back on its assurances, the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) on Monday announced that it would resume an indefinite hunger strike from May 1 against the two 1,000 MW plants at Kudankulam.  "We have decided to go on hunger protest once again from May 1 onwards as the state government has gone against its assurances given to us. A large number...