Human Rights

The fashion community worldwide is not known to get into political wrangles. But the New York Fashion Week this time did – it booted out the daughter of Uzbekistan’s dictator who had planned to unveil her spring fashion line at the event. The organisers of the New York Fashion Week cancelled the show of Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzebekistan’s authoritarian leader Islam Karimov, after intense pressure from groups like the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). According to HRW, “Her father...

The Supreme Court, in 2006, had passed a landmark judgment directing all state governments and the Union government to reform the way police forces function all over the country. One of the directives was that police complaints authorities (PCAs) should be set up in all states. The intention was to make the police accountable for their actions. The court directed the setting up of both state level and district level police complaints authorities so that they would be easily accessible for all...

A circular issued by the Kerala government directing the public education department to deploy online school management software called Sampoorna in schools across the state has drawn flak from civil liberties activists. According to the circular, details of as many as 6 million students spanning over 15,000 schools in the state would be captured in this scheme. All schoolchildren will soon have unique identification numbers (UID), which will help in tracking their movements in educational...

The Supreme Court of India’s directive to the Chhattisgarh government to disband and disarm 6,500 special police officers (SPOs) engaged in anti-Maoist operations is a slap on the latter’s face. On Tuesday, a Supreme Court bench ordered the Union government “to cease and desist, forthwith, from using any of its funds in supporting, directly or indirectly the recruitment of SPOs for the purposes of engaging in any form of counter-insurgency activities against Maoist/Naxalite groups”. SPOs, also...

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...

The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in New Delhi is known to introduce regulations on the sly, but this one comes across as sinister. The new Information Technology Rules Act 2011 seeks to regulate Web content that is deemed to be “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.” The Department of Information Technology (DIT) can now block any website that displays disparaging content based on a list of criteria defined by the new rules. Any official or private citizen...

You, more often than not, become a product of the times and the circumstances that you live in. If you live in a conflict zone, the incessant bloodletting gets to you sooner than later. Either you become inured to brutalities, or start believing that killing one’s fellow human beings is the only to either to gain salvation or to solve your immediate existentialist problems. But suppose you were to extend this analogy to a place where cattle-rearing is one of the mainstays of the people. Would...

It is not rare to see corporates letting the people know in no uncertain terms about how the State ought to be run. There's nothing wrong with that; it is an inalienable democratic right. It is however yet another thing to believe in democratic values. And practice what you preach. So their honchos time and again pour their hearts and anger out in books, in interviews. Among those with the holiest attitude is Infosys. Yes, the same company that has been trending practically all day on Twitter...

The Northeast often gets into the mainstream India news for the wrong reasons. This time it's all about Irom Sharmila. For the wrong reasons, though. The not-so-young-anymore woman, unfortunately, has become a rallying point between the Hazare brigade and the Hazare bashers. The only point common to Kisan Baburao Hazare and Iron Sharmila Chanu is that both have had undertaken fasts. That's where the odious comparison ends. For, Hazare did so as a blackmailing tool and Sharmila did as a protest —...

An official complaint has been filed against oil giant Shell for breaches of basic standards for responsible business set out by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth International on Monday claimed that Shell’s use of discredited and misleading information to blame the majority of oil pollution on saboteurs in its Niger Delta operations has breached the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. The complaint was...