Capital - My taxes go where? How countries spend your money. Justice in Criminal Investigations | Inconvenient Questions. For the Record / January 22, 2016by Sujatha Selvakumar The suicide of 14-year-old Benjamin Lim, who was interrogated by the police unaccompanied by an adult, raises questions about individual rights and police procedures. In the Singapore system, the police is not obliged to inform suspects of their rights, and there are features that make the process unfavourable towards suspects. A better balance needs to be struck between efficiency and individual rights, especially when it comes to youthful suspects. Criminal Investigations are daunting for anyone, and even more so for young persons. The unaccompanied police interrogations of 14-year-old Benjamin Lim, and his decision shortly thereafter to jump to his death, fills me with disquiet.
Much has been written about the treating of a young person like an adult and submitting him to interrogations unaccompanied. The difficulty arises when suspects are not informed of their constitutional rights by the police. About the Author: Barack Obama: Why we must rethink solitary confinement. Barack Obama is president of the United States. In 2010, a 16-year-old named Kalief Browder from the Bronx was accused of stealing a backpack. He was sent to Rikers Island to await trial, where he reportedly endured unspeakable violence at the hands of inmates and guards — and spent nearly two years in solitary confinement.
In 2013, Kalief was released, having never stood trial. He completed a successful semester at Bronx Community College. But life was a constant struggle to recover from the trauma of being locked up alone for 23 hours a day. One Saturday, he committed suicide at home. Solitary confinement gained popularity in the United States in the early 1800s, and the rationale for its use has varied over time. There are as many as 100,000 people held in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons — including juveniles and people with mental illnesses. Research suggests that solitary confinement has the potential to lead to devastating, lasting psychological consequences. Rethinking College Admissions. Photo Over recent years there’s been a steady escalation of concern about the admissions process at the most revered, selective American colleges.
And little by little, those colleges have made tweaks. But I get the thrilling sense that something bigger is about to give. The best evidence is a report to be released on Wednesday. I received an advance copy. “Turning the Tide” sagely reflects on what’s wrong with admissions and rightly calls for a revolution, including specific suggestions. Focused on certain markers and metrics, the admissions process warps the values of students drawn into a competitive frenzy.
“It’s really time to say ‘enough,’ stop wringing our hands and figure out some collective action,” Richard Weissbourd, a senior lecturer at Harvard’s education school, told me. Weissbourd is one of the directors of the school’s Making Caring Common project, which produced the report. “Turning the Tide” follows other reexaminations of the admissions process.
Some Inconvenient Gun Facts for Liberals. Photo FOR those of us who argue in favor of gun safety laws, there are a few inconvenient facts. We liberals are sometimes glib about equating guns and danger. In fact, it’s complicated: The number of guns in America has increased by more than 50 percent since 1993, and in that same period the gun homicide rate in the United States has dropped by half. Then there are the policies that liberals fought for, starting with the assault weapons ban. A 113-page study found no clear indication that it reduced shooting deaths for the 10 years it was in effect. That’s because the ban was poorly drafted, and because even before the ban, assault weapons accounted for only 2 percent of guns used in crimes. Move on to open-carry and conceal-carry laws: With some 13 million Americans now licensed to pack a concealed gun, many liberals expected gun battles to be erupting all around us.
One of the puzzles of American politics is that most voters want gun regulation, but Congress resists. Hillary Clinton’s plan for paid family leave is bad policy design. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Paid family leave has created a schism in the Democratic Party. True, all of the party’s candidates have outspokenly backed the idea that the U.S. should catch up to the rest of the world and guarantee its citizens paid time off for a new child or a serious injury.
But Hillary Clinton has broken with her rivals by not endorsing the proposal pending in Congress. For a long time Clinton hadn’t said what she would do instead. Now the details are finally out, and in many ways her proposal is nearly identical to the other Democrats’: She wants to ensure that when Americans take 12 weeks off through the Family and Medical Leave Act—a current guarantee of unpaid leave—they will get at least two-thirds of their normal pay up to an unnamed cap. But there is one key difference, and while it might sound trivial to new parents desperate to afford some time off, it could make or break the future of paid leave in the U.S. There are good reasons for that. From the top to the bottom of MNREGA. MNREGA – the world’s largest public works programme - is intended to be demand-driven and has local implementation at its core. In this note, Megan Sheahan, Research Support Specialist at Cornell University, shares her experience of visiting MNREGA work sites in some of the most deprived communities in Andhra Pradesh.
She finds that while the scheme has enabled a jump in earnings and created useful assets for villagers, beneficiaries have little control over the timing or type of work allocated to them. In early June 2015, I travelled to India to present research on the varied impacts of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), the legal entitlement behind the largest public works programme in the world, to a room full of impressively engaged Ministry of Rural Development staff and state-level programme implementers. A village in the coastal plains Chakradhar Buddha translates questions from Sudha Narayanan and responses from female MNREGA workers.
A Farmer's Wake-Up Call To India: Try To Understand Why We Die. At The Logical Indian, we strive to bring you stories and news that matters using evocative media. We curate content that is both meaningful and socially relevant. We are not traditional media house backed by corporate funds but passionate citizens just like you are. We don't believe in blaming the system or the administration for the ills of our nation. How long shall we keep complaining, how long shall we wait for our voices to be heard?
Not anymore, it's time to act! It's our nation, it's our responsibility. We strive to build a great community of passionate change seekers. The Logical Indian began with a vision and to take it to its desired end we need funds, infrastructure and human resources. We will need your support at every step. How One PIL On the Lack of Cleanliness of Railways in India Exposed Bureaucratic Deadlock. “Everyday, as you go about your daily chores, many things will pick at your conscience,” AK Singh told me, as we sat in the small conference room of AK Singh and Company—his law firm in Saket. Singh has been a practicing lawyer for over 37 years.
Well over a year ago, in early 2014, he was travelling by train to Agra, with friends who were visiting from different parts of the world. It was then, he told me, that he realised what was troubling his conscience. The squalid scenery that is a part of every train journey in India made him squirm in his seat as the coach he was in hurtled past the urban slums that had sprung up beside the railway tracks.
Shortly after, Singh decided to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) regarding the matter. A few months later, in October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan—Clean India Mission—to much fanfare. Somvanshi was not alone in raising these concerns. Atul Dev is a reporter at Vantage, The Caravan. The Wealth of Nations – The Caravan. ABOUT 45 MINUTES NORTH of Ahmedabad, having passed under a sign that announces your impending arrival in “GREEN CLEAN GANDHINAGAR” and another advertising Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University, you may or may not notice a small placard with the word “GIFT” printed over an arrow pointing east.
Follow that arrow down a dusty access road, past a rusted-out advertisement for an amusement park called Gujarat Funworld, which looks decidedly un-fun. Within 15 minutes, you’ll reach Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, or GIFT—a place, a video on its website proudly proclaims, “where wealth breeds wealth.”
GIFT is to be India’s first Smart City. Phase one of its construction is slated for completion by March next year. Productivity and modernity are urban Gujarat’s calling cards, nowhere more so than in Ahmedabad and the adjacent capital of Gandhinagar, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi led his home state for 13 years. GIFT is the clearest imaginable expression of that aim. How rational is Delhi’s road rationing? A key condition for the success of road rationing is that alternatives are easily available A big debate on urban transport policy has been triggered by the decision of the state government of Delhi to restrict automobile usage according to the licence plate number.
The plan is to significantly reduce vehicular traffic by allowing odd and even numbers to ply the roads on alternate days. Given the city’s atrocious air quality, something drastic needs to be done. The problem is that this particular policy has been tried in other countries for years with poor results except for short periods. The idea of using the licence plate number to ration road space is not new. Unfortunately, the longer-term outcomes were not so encouraging.
It turns out that people begin to game the system once it’s permanent. The Delhi government has announced that it will do a trial run from the beginning of January 2016. A key condition for the success of road rationing is that alternatives are easily available. In a slum fire outside Delhi, the frightening vision of a future smart city.
The night Nazmin escaped from the fire on the edge of Delhi, the only document she carried to safety was the one that lay folded inside a tiny red wallet she kept tucked in her dress. It was her husband's voter identity card that bore the address of their village in Bihar's Araria district. Nazmin had left the village of Taran over ten years ago to join her husband Mohammad Sakeem in Delhi to make a living collecting and selling waste. The couple rented a shanty in a slum in Laxmi Nagar in east Delhi among other Muslim waste-collectors from Araria. In 2007, soon after their first daughter was born, the slum was demolished to make way for the Delhi Metro. The waste-collectors of Laxmi Nagar moved ten kilometres east to an empty plot of land.
The slum colony of the waste collectors took the name Shukra Bazar from the Friday market that used to be held on the periphery of the plot before they moved in. The slum residents call it the "mall" but it is a luxury hotel, Radisson Blu. Programme keeps mothers safe but boosts population. Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY): The outcome till now IndiaSpend IndiaSpend is a public interest journalism initiative that uses data to tell stories.
In keeping with this spirit & the pursuit of insightful journalism, we are structured as a non-profit in the form of a Trust registered with the Charities Commissioner, Mumbai. IndiaSpend was founded in late 2011 by Govindraj Ethiraj and has a team of 7 researchers and writers, apart from contributors who are mostly economists or come from a humanities background. . | Nov 30, 2015 in Featured, NL Collaborations | 0 Comments Greta Gabaglio / Shutterstock.com More mothers are being kept safe and alive thanks to a government programme, but its unintended consequence in high-population-growth states could be an increase in female fertility, a new study has found. With a fertility rate of 2.6 children per women, India’s population is on course to reach 1.5 billion by 2050, as IndiaSpend has reported. India needs to promote safe motherhood. Loading...
How To Get Your Green Card In America. Yale’s Halloween Advice Stokes a Racially Charged Debate. A Point of View: Why we should defend the right to be offensive. Image copyright iStock Free speech can make for uncomfortable listening, argues Roger Scruton, but it needs to be defended even when it gives offence. To people like me, educated in post-war Britain, free speech has been a firm premise of the British way of life. As John Stuart Mill expressed the point: "The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.
That famous statement is not the last word on the question, but it is the first word and was, during my youth, the received opinion of all educated people. Moreover, public opinion was entirely on the side of the law, ready to shame those who assumed the right to silence their opponents, whatever the matter under discussion, and however extreme or absurd the views expressed. All that is now changing. But is giving offence a reason to convict someone of a crime? John Edward, USA.