In a stark reminder of the exploitation of street children, a new study has found that one out of every five street urchins in Delhi is a rag picker. With most adults unwilling to do the work of rummaging through the city's garbage, an overwhelming number of children have been driven to do it. About 15% children are street vendors, while 15% depend on begging for their living. With the country...

Final draft bill on website within a week for public comments NAC hopes Bill will create a “robust accountability system” Government will be obliged to lay down national standards for all provisions for victims After several extensions, and a controversy over the exit of members of its drafting and advisory committees, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC)'s draft Communal & Sectarian Violence Bill is finally ready: it will be presented on Thursday...

Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered "disparaging," "harassing," "blasphemous" or "hateful." The new rules, quietly issued by the country's Department of Information Technology earlier this month and only now attracting attention, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list...

The activism of civil society against corruption has caught the imagination of many Indians. Arguments put forward by representatives of the civil society organisations (CSOs) can be summarised as follows: 'All - at least most - politicians, ministers, bureaucrats are corrupt. Voters are incapable of deciding what is good for them. The police, Central Bureau of Investigation and the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, and all other agencies of the State...

A UN panel has said killing of tens of thousands of people in the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil strife could amount to "war crimes", but Secretary General Ban Ki-moon insisted he would only launch an international investigation if Colombo agrees or member states call for it. A UN statement publicly releasing a report by a world body panel said that Secretary General has been advised that he needs...