South Asia Citizens Web

Instead of seeing Salman Taseer’s murder as an unprecedented act commanding utter shock and horror, it must be placed on a continuum of rising intolerance and vigilantism that has been given official protection

The debates around securing the right to health for all in India are at a complex and sensitive stage. In India, we have gross inequity in health-care delivery. The huge inequity is evident, on the one hand, in flourishing international medical tourism, and high-technology biomedical interventions done cheaply, and, on the other, minimum levels of health care being unavailable to those unable to pay.

Draft articles on citizenship in Nepal’s proposed new constitution risk making many Nepali children stateless, Human Rights Watch said today. Some of the proposed citizenship provisions are sharply at odds with Nepal’s obligations under international law as well as the explicit commitment in the draft constitution itself to prevent statelessness, Human Rights Watch said.

The current draft, as modified by the High Level Task Force created to review the draft constitutional provisions in November 2010, specifies that a child would automatically be granted Nepali citizenship only if both parents prove they are Nepali citizens. Human Rights Watch urges the Constituent Assembly to amend the draft to allow a child born to either a Nepali mother or a Nepali father to be able to claim citizenship by descent.

K.G. Kannabiran passed away on 30 December 2010. India will enter the second decade of the 21st century without its leading civil liberties lawyer for the last four decades.

With the passing of K.G. Kannabiran, India has lost a great lawyer, defender of the Constitution and conscience-keeper. When this writer last met him some months ago, he was sitting in his office in West Marredapally in Secunderabad, having a drink, his eyes twinkling. He had given away most of his beloved law books. He said he had had a rich life and there were no regrets. He was right. Kannabiran enriched all those who came his way, he spoke for those who could not tell their own stories, he defended dissenters, and most importantly, practised law gloriously. And by doing so, he illuminated the path for younger lawyers.