The ‘rarest of rare' doctrine is a grey area: Justice Ganguly Supreme Court Judge A.K. Ganguly on Tuesday termed death penalty “barbaric,” “anti-life,” “undemocratic” and “irresponsible,” but “legal.” Expressing his “personal views” on the subject, Justice Ganguly said the constitutional guarantee of ‘right to life' could not be subjected to vague premises. The ‘rarest of rare' doctrine in death penalty cases “is a grey area as it depended on the interpretation of...

Here in Delhi, you can buy a litre of petrol for a little less than Rs 69. A cylinder of cooking gas costsRs 405. But there's one state capital where petrol costs Rs 200 a litre and gas a staggeringRs 2,000 a cylinder. That city is Imphal, the capital of our easternmost state, Manipur. Since August 1, the state has been hostage to a withering siege: a blockage of two...

'Food subsidy is a massive burden…if so much is spent on subsidies, what is left for development?' agriculture minister Sharad Pawar recently asked. It is a legitimate question that is on the minds of many but seldom gets asked for fear of appearing callous. Are we prematurely trying to be a welfare State? In the developed world, safety nets like food stamps are regarded as humanitarian obligations toward the poor....

'Economic growth will need massive energy. Will we allow an accident in Japan, in a 40-year-old reactor at Fukushima, arising out of extreme natural stresses, to derail our dreams to be an economically developed nation?' Every single atom in the universe carries an unimaginably powerful battery within its heart, called the nucleus. This form of energy, often called Type-1 fuel, is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times more powerful...

The word ‘hunger’ does not appear in the 12th Plan Approach Paper even once, whereas according to the latest Global Hunger Index Report, India continues to be in the category of those nations where hunger is ‘alarming’. What is worse, India is one of the three countries where the hunger index between 1996 and 2011 has gone up from 22.9 to 23.7, while 78 out of the 81 developing countries...