Critique of the Times

Many Indian hospitals routinely subject rape survivors to forensic examinations that include the unscientific and degrading "finger" test, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. The 54-page report, "Dignity on Trial: India's Need for Sound Standards for Conducting and Interpreting Forensic Examinations of Rape Survivors," documents the continued use of the archaic practice and the continued reliance on the "results" by many defence counsel and courts. The medieval practice, described in...

It’s now the turn of an Indian journalist to be a victim of America’s Islamophobia. Zia Haq, an assistant editor with Hindustan Times, was part of a seven-journalist delegation invited to participate in a week-long technology and farm show that began on August 28 at Iowa in the United States. The US embassy here suspended the processing of his visa on unexplained grounds, and Haq had to drop out of the tour at the last minute. The HT journalist says on his blog that he has been singled out, “All...

The Manmohan Singh government is always in a rush when it comes to legislations and actions over which doubts are raised. Democracy, for it, is only about mustering enough numbers to bulldoze them through the two houses of Parliament. Democratic values, civil liberties, and all allied terms and phrases are thrown into the dustbins of history. All shamelessly done in the name of national fervour and security. Among other things on its twisted mind is the Prevention of Torture Bill, 2010, a deeply...

It's an irony of sorts. One of the most popular food chains in India is arguably one of the worst when it comes to food safety. Haldiram's has been rated Red in Greenpeace's Safe Food Guide version 2.0 that ranks 25 of the most popular food companies which hold a major share of the market in the country. Based on their responsibility towards Indian consumer on the GM food issue, the Guide categorises companies as Green, Yellow and Red. Apart from Haldiram's, other major companies that have made...

Anything being done for the first time generates a lot of interest, both in the media as well as among the consuming public who devour such coverage. So when it comes to female MPs posing in a glam calendar, the interest generated is bound to be on the higher side. As it was when the Public Affairs (VV – Veci verejne) party in the Czech Republic started selling a 2011 calendar featuring photographs of some of its leading female members, including four newly sworn-in lawmakers, clad in revealing...

For the past one week, it has been the same story every day. It has been raining, pouring, making the city of Delhi a bigger mess than it was the previous day. The newspapers are full of photographs the following morning telling us the hell others have been going through too. Immediate problems beget immediate reactions. The civic bodies are to blame for the mess, we are told. And the blame game goes on. Now, now, tell us something new, will you? While it is a fait accompli that the metropolitan...

The Indian elite is known for many things good, bad and ugly, its ostrich syndrome being one. Any ill that does not plague it, simply does not exist. A liberalised socio-economic regime gives it all the privileges that it barefacedly demands; civil liberties always go to hell and stay there. So when civil liberties activists raised the alarm after the Indian laws governing cyberspace and online activities came into force, no one took any cognisance of them. Street dogs after all are wont to bark...

On August 10, a frantic message landed in the mailbox of members of a Facebook group called Save Niyamgiri. Two leaders of the Dongria-Kondh tribe’s resistance to a controversial mine in Orissa’s Lanjigarh were said to have been abducted, and had subsequently gone missing. The two men were reported to have been ambushed at the base of the hill range where they live, bundled into a vehicle at gunpoint, and driven away. They were not being held at local police stations, Lanjigarh or Muniguda. A...

When skewed concepts of development are the watchwords of the day, it is more than likely that voices against this twisted sense of development don't see the light of day. So when a group that fights for tribal people around the world releases a report on dams, it is damned and made to disappear into the back hole of the news world. That is what happened to happened to the report "Serious Damage: Tribal peoples and large dams" that was released last week by Survival International. The report...

When it comes to Kashmir, you need to reconcile yourself to a few facts. First, you know as little about the goings-on there as the Indian news media condescends to tell you. And second, you know as much about the happenings there as you delve through alternative sources for news. And a corollary to the first would be that you believe as much rubbish as media wants you to. If you thought from the coverage both in the print and broadcast media that Kashmir was finally in the news, well, here’s...