The hunger and malnutrition situation in the country has shown marginal improvement, according to the HUNGaMA report. ONE area that has always bothered policymakers in a growth-obsessed economy is the state of the social sector, in particular figures indicating the numbers of people going hungry or are homeless and children who are out of school, the poor nutritional status of women and children, and the high infant and maternal mortality rates....

-Economic and Political Weekly   The Reliance/Network18 deal should make us wake up to the impending threat to media plurality. Few are discussing it. India has just seen one of the biggest media deals, where the country’s leading industrial and business giant has bought into the largest network of news and current affairs TV channels. Yet, the fact that this could mark the beginning of a trend leading to private media being controlled...

In the absence of legislation to protect women from sexual harassment at the workplace, the Supreme Court in 1997 laid down guidelines in the Vishaka vs State of Rajasthan in 1997. Thirteen years later, Parliament came up with the “Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010”. However, the Bill sees sexual harassment at the workplace not as a criminal offence but as a mere civil wrong, the...

PRASHANT BHUSHAN, a member of Team Anna and a Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court, has been a vociferous critic of the government's Lokpal Bill at every stage. He answers, in an interview to Frontline, questions raised by Members of Parliament during the recent debate on the Lokpal Bill in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha and enunciates the challenges ahead of the movement for an effective Lokpal. Excerpts: The government's...

Days after chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy wished to see every police station in the state work like a corporate office and the complainant received warmly, a Right to Information (RTI) activist on Friday was nearly subjected to the third degree treatment by inspector K Srinivas Rao after he walked into Kukatpally police station, and only timely intervention by higher-ups saved him from being arrested and slapped with false cases....