-Pune Mirror Child rights activists demand that Centre amends Child Labour Act to ban children from working in the field Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL) submitted a charter of demands to Pune MP Anil Shirole to be raised in Parliament when the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Bill, 2014, comes up for discussion during the ongoing session. And, one of CACL's principal demands - perhaps the most important one -...

-The Hindu Attempt to commit suicide should stay on the statute book because suicide comes in conflict with the monopolistic power of the state to take away life You choose your country, you choose your spouse, you choose your profession, you choose your political masters, and you choose where you want to live and how. Die you must. But how to die and when: should that be a matter of choice as...

-The United Nations The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has announced its involvement in an international partnership to improve civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems in the Asia-Pacific region. Shun-ichi Murata, ESCAP Deputy Executive Secretary, hailed the partnership, announced in New York yesterday at an event that included former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the city's former Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who...

-The Indian Express The Union government has decided to decriminalise suicide. A funny interpretation could well be that the Modi government can now commit hara kiri with impunity. But it should be noted that the cases under Section 309, which criminalises suicide, are haphazard, often concealing abetment to murder. Philosophically, it is argued that the right to life includes the right to die without provocation or abetment by anyone else. In a...

-DNA A nursery in a small Tamil Nadu town is enabling Irula women, once a forest-dwelling people, to gradually join the mainstream, reports Marisha Karwa Where do you go when you have no place to call home? What do you do when your means of livelihood has been declared illegal? And how do you live a life that is alien to the ways and norms of what has been passed to...