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Dear Reader,
Life for the urban poor in India is, at the best of times, precarious. A significant section of them live in settlements untouched by civic amenities and support, and at the mercy of the governments' whims and fancies.
What they fear most is being uprooted by the state from the only place they have known as ‘home’ for decades, without even a cursory effort at rehabilitation. Article 14 brings you one such story from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, where a whole colony of about 10,000 settlers live in fear of losing their homes to a proposed riverfront. This is despite a stay order from the Allahabad High Court.
In Tripura, just 30 km from the capital Agartala, in the Krishnacharan Pada village, a severe shortage has 80 tribal families scrambling for water even as a heatwave rages. The village, which is said to be “200 years old,” has a pipeline but no water, and villagers have to trek far to fetch a pail, often polluted, from a hole in the ground. Main Bhi Bharat reports on this not so unfamiliar story from India’s villages.
The Chief Justice of India does not have a fixed tenure, as they mandatorily retire at the age of 65. The length of their tenure at the helm is determined by their age on the date of elevation. This has led to tenures of Chief Justices ranging from a mere 17 days to 7.4 years. This ‘revolving door’ format, based entirely on seniority, has led observers to decry the practice, as the short tenures lead to “institutional instability” and the inability of the Chiefs to leave their mark.
Supreme Court Observer digs into the tenures of the next eight chief justices by seniority and finds that the average time in office will drop even further. A fixed tenure for the Chief Justice and an increase in the retirement ages of judges have been advocated as the way forward to mitigate the high turnover of the Apex Court’s chief justices.
Last month, the European Union (EU) passed legislation to regulate AI. MediaNama notes that this marks the “first comprehensive effort” to establish rules for AI on a large scale and provide a “baseline level of protection” and rules of governance for all AI applications.
However, in marked contrast, it says, India’s efforts at formulating a policy on AI are characterised by a “reactive and ad-hoc” approach. The story examines what the EU law does and what India should do.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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