Analyses

The Delhi High Court judgment asking the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) to comply with a order of the Central Information Commissioner (CIC) over the publication of a crucial ecological report has pushed the ministry to the wall. A recalcitrant MoEF, which had been smarting ever since the CIC asked it to published a high-profile report by the Western Ghats Ecological Expert Panel (WGEEP) it had held back, had moved the court against the CIC directive of April 9. The court had...

One would need to be blind not to notice the signs – that of the Indian publishing industry being on a roll. Every other person seems to be penning a book, and everyone seems to be buying and reading them. Newspapers every other day carry reports of one book launch or the other. To top it all, there are the literary festivals that all and sundry want to attend. Yes, the Indian publishing industry is certainly on the upswing, if one goes by sheer numbers, recession or otherwise. But then, all...

There was a recent move in the Maharashtra Assembly which did not go down well with anti-abortionists. The state was planning to treat female foeticide as murder, and book culprits under the Indian Penal Code (IPC). On the face of it, it appeared a welcome step towards addressing the skewed sex ratio issue. But delve a bit deep, and the contours of the debate change – for the issue is also a lot about semantics and definitions. Fauzia Khan, minister of state for public health, announced in the...

It made for a wonderful keepsake photo opportunity when leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) visited New Delhi for preliminary tripartite peace talks in August. There were smiles all around, and word was that peace was soon going to return to Assam. Unfortunately, that’s where the good news ends as of now. If you go beyond the headlines and hark a little into the past, you will find that things will progressively appear worse. That would be because there are many talking points...

Talking about the insufficient coverage of wildlife issues in the news media is akin to flogging a dead horse. Certainly in conservationist circles. Conservationists never mince words about what they think of the media per se. Having worked on both sides of this divide, with both wildlife organisations as well as in the news media, I feel conservationists too should start owning up to their faults. A journalist who reports or writes about wildlife faces a number of problems, apart from the well...

The death penalty is back in the limelight in India after a long time, this time for all the wrong reasons — mostly political. The issue came back into focus after Indian President Pratibha Patil approved the executions of two death row prisoners. Patil accepted the Indian Home Ministry’s recommendations to reject the mercy petitions of death row prisoners Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar and Mahendra Nath Das. Bhullar was sentenced to death in 2001 for plotting terror attacks that killed nine people...

Critics have long argued that the Indian government lost the plot in Kashmir ages back. But as an incident on Saturday shows, it is now increasingly turning schizophrenic — imagining enemies where there aren’t any. Well-known human rights activist Gautam Navlakha was detained at Srinagar International Airport on his arrival there on Saturday. He was not allowed to enter the city, and was served an order under section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Core (CRPC). Navlakha, who’s a frequent visitor...

Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution is the first of its kind: the toppling of an autocrat in the Arab world who was till the end backed by Western powers. What now remains to be seen is if unrest in this Maghreb country will spread across the Middle East. Early signs, if there can be any, are already there. As in Tunisia, Algeria too has been ravaged by riots in protest against food prices. Shortly after Tunisian President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali fled his country, the Algerian government of Abdelaziz...

No journalist worth his or her salt can ever want to see a day without one's paper. But journalists in Manipur, time and again, are pushed so much against the wall, that they are left with no other choice. It's happened once again in the state — this time, it signalling a wrong start to the New Year. Newspapers failed to hit the stands on January 1, and as reports last came in, the stand of the beleaguered scribes has failed to make any impression on the callous rulers of the state. Journalists...

Wage riots and workplace accidents in Bangladesh have not been making mainstream media headlines. The over-populated, under-fed country, should one be told, is caught in a vice-like grip. This stranglehold is all about the lust for fashion in the West over lives of labourers in a developing country. It is about robbing the poor to feed the rich. What Bangladesh has been witnessing for the last few weeks is a fallout of the global economic meltdown and the exigency of outsourcing, the two being...