Diluting women's share in marital property in the event of divorce, the government has sought to restrict the provision for `immoveable property' to residential assets, a move opposed by women's rights activists. The marriage amendment bill seeks to amend the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, and the Special Marriage Act, 1954, legislating a women's right to marital property acquired during the subsistence of marriage. The amendment cleared by the Union Cabinet recently...

On a day the Trinamool Congress celebrated the first anniversary of the announcement of the 2011 Assembly polls results, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said here on Sunday that there has been an average of one farmer suicide every week since Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's government came to power in West Bengal.  “Up to 2011 in States like West Bengal and Kerala there was no news of...

-The Times of India AHMEDABAD: As many as 41% of the children in the state are underweight and 55% of the women between 15 to 45 years of age in the state are anemic. This was revealed in a Rajya Sabha session on Thursday. Union minister of state (independent charge) for women and child development, Krishna Tirath in Rajya Sabha gave the details of the number of women and children suffering from...

As cartoons, like all other images, are constantly subject to fresh interpretation, there is a need to set boundaries within which dissent must be tolerated; or else we run the risk of damaging the task of knowledge building Like many books, works of art, and articles that have been summarily withdrawn from public circulation, for different political reasons, and due to public pressure, the controversial 1949 cartoon by Shankar has been...

An illustration in a textbook must expand or add to the lesson; Shankar's cartoon of Ambedkar does neither The controversy kicked up over the withdrawal of a textbook for high school over a cartoon after a ruckus in Parliament has been superficially interpreted and uniformly criticised without understanding the sensitivities of the oppressed for whom B.R. Ambedkar is a hero. The anger of Dalits is being interpreted as intolerance while in...