-Live Mint For the first time, tribal communities in India will have a say in implementation of projects that affect them In the last six months, two key milestones have been reached in India around the protection of Adivasi rights. The first milestone was a ruling by Supreme Court in April which gave Adivasi communities in the Niyamgiri hills of Orissa the final say on plans by a subsidiary of Vedanta...

-The Hindu     Lawmakers are eager to appear resolute in the fight against crime, but seem to forget that certainty of punishment, not severity, is the real deterrent "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," said Mahatma Gandhi. The death penalty is unjust and inhuman. Its continued use is a stain on a society built on humanitarian values, and it should be abolished immediately. Many think that there could be nothing wrong...

-The Telegraph Meet the Merciful Marxists, never mind the Bolsheviks preferred a bullet to the head and Meera Bhattacharjee graced a public platform in Calcutta to seek the death penalty. Prakash Karat today said the CPM had decided to advocate without exception the abolition of death penalty, almost a decade after its Bengal unit led a vociferous campaign to hang teen rapist and killer Dhananjoy Chatterjee. "The central committee has decided that...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: India Inc has been conspicuously absent from a four-year-old United Nations-led global initiative against corruption, an unflattering distinction for Indian industry that could also buttress a widespread feeling that doing business in the country is difficult without bribing officials. Not one Indian company has yet joined a global panel of companies steered by the world body to act against corruption in their businesses and pressurise governments...

-The Times of India Fewer countries are carrying out executions than a decade ago, but India along with nations like Gambia, Pakistan and Japan bucked the trend to resume handing out death penalties. An Amnesty International report says that 21 countries executed convicts last year as compared to 28 in 2003. But there is greater concern that Indian courts had meted out at least 78 death sentences with more than 400 estimated...