South Asia Citizens Web

The near-exclusive pre-occupation of political parties with electoral politics tends to render values like secularism and social justice into mere vote-gathering gimmicks and people begin to lose faith in all claims in respect of them. Particularly when they see secular parties joining hands with parties and groups they declare communal as happened in 1967, 1977, 1989 and 1991. Or when avowedly secular parties are seen to adopt the communal agenda, as the Congress did between 1977 and 1996.

Ishita Dutta provides a comprehensive overview of the forms of discrimination practised and ways to remedy the situation.

Victims of a culture that puts their needs last, more women die from childbirth in India than anywhere else in the world.

First, Kashmiri Afzal Guru was hanged and now the region is under curfew in India’s heartless display of retributive justice

a memo that India’s Home Ministry circulated late last year to Indian missions abroad, stipulating that gay couples, single men and women, nonmarried couples and couples from countries where surrogacy is illegal be prohibited from hiring a commercial surrogate in India. As of an unspecified date, foreigners who want to hire a surrogate must be a “man and woman,” the new rule says, “[who] are duly married and the marriage should be sustained at least two years.