South Asia Citizens Web

Janhit People’s Legal Resource Centre is based in Chhattisgarh, here is the August 2011 report of the various cases its been involved in. contents: —Whether Ramesh Agrawal or Bhagwati Sahu – victims of malicious corporate litigation get no relief from the High Court.
— Who will judge the judges?
— The Strange Case of Sanau Kadiyam
— Labour disputes and Civil suits
— Dainik Bhaskar – the power of the media!
— Criminalising dissent – the case of Sukhranjan Usendi
— Singhdev Yojana and adivasis of Ambikapur

The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) have suggested an alternative approach to the Jan Lokpal. Shankar Singh, Nikhil Dey and Aruna Roy of MKSS and NCPRI have critiqued the government draft of the Lokpal now in Parliament and also the Jan Lokpal bill for its lack of accountability and concentration of power in a single body. They have suggested an alternative framework that takes a multi-pronged approach to tackling corruption through concurrent anti-corruption and grievance redress measures.

It has been difficult not to be reminded of Satanic Verses since news items started trickling out —first, a few days back, about demands for a ban on Aarakshan and then, even more bizarrely, about actual bans being imposed in UP, Punjab and now AP — ruled respectively by the BSP, the Akalis and the BJP, and the Congress.

No one is questioning the right of these groups to be concerned about the political content of Aarakshan. But when the freedom to express this manifests itself as mob fascism, and there is no quick and effective statutory response to it, then filmmakers will be left at the mercy of any group that chooses to threaten a film’s release on the pretext of being apprehensive about its politics. Unless the state, the film industry, artists, thinkers, and civil society formulate a decisive response to it, this danger to everyone’s freedom of expression will only escalate.

myths perpetrated by governments can be exposed through consistent public campaigns