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Dear Reader,
Fake news and disinformation have been the scourge of our times—upending public debate, adulterating discourse, and impinging on democratic rights. Amidst this maelstrom, fact-checkers have been at the forefront of stemming the tide through rigorous adherence to facts and red-flagging breaches. It, therefore, seemed a step backwards when Meta announced, two weeks ago, that it would be disbanding both its fact-checking and diversity programmes.
It was at once seen as a ploy to placate and defer to political developments in the United States. However, its impact has far-reaching consequences. The India Forum analyses and explains the chilling effect that fact-checkers face in India, and how alternate fact-checking tools like AI and Community Notes come with their own fallacies.
In India, domestic violence survivors, especially women, not only go through the trauma of abuse but also face the anguish of their children being separated from them through abduction and force. While other countries like the UK, for instance, have criminalised parental kidnapping, the laws in India are not only clouded but the wheels of legislation like the Domestic Violence Act, 2005, grind excruciatingly slowly.
Article 14 finds that although courts, in recent instances, are increasingly primed to redress the balance in the battle for custody of children, there is an urgent need to find more effective solutions. This should include enabling the aggrieved parent to directly approach the High Court to produce the child through a habeas corpus petition under the powers granted to the Court under Article 226 of the Constitution – the power to issue certain writs.
Three decades after the one-third reservation for women in panchayats through the 73rd Constitutional Amendment in 1992, a common criticism has been that women's representation remains largely ceremonial, with actual power being wielded by men.
However, in the last decade or so, change has been in the air. The Migration Story reports from Uttarakhand on the tectonic shifts rife in women's participation and power in the public space, that has accompanied a wider migration of men to cities for work. This wave of new and emerging women leaders has not only eroded the image of ‘pradhan patis’—men ruling by proxy for their elected spouses—but also turned attention to social issues. This has improved schools, increased access to food grains, and generated an uptick in public welfare.
And, the Delhi’s Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) is tasked with monitoring hospitals, protecting patients' rights and ensuring quality healthcare. In August, The Probe reported how the DGHS had turned a blind eye to blatant violation of norms by hospitals, including operating with expired licences, and had provided misleading information in response to queries under the Right to Information Act.
Last week, as a consequence of The Probe’s reporting, the Central Information Commission (CIC) not only imposed penalties on the DGHS for breaching the provisions of the RTI Act, seemingly to favour a private hospital in Delhi, but also took punitive action against the officer responsible for the breach.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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