What can Rs 500 buy?
It’s high time the anachronistic laws on maintenance went
A divorced woman in India faces not just social stigma, she has to reckon with anachronistic and discriminatory laws which do not protect her even while they claim to do so. The interim relief a woman is entitled to under the law is a princely sum of Rs 500, which is insufficient to keep a pet poodle well fed, leave alone a human being.

The disorder of law
Poor conviction rates underline the failure of the system
The abysmally low rate of conviction in criminal cases is a matter of serious concern. The latest figures of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) are, in fact, a sharp indictment of the criminal justice system. Of the total cases registered by the police, only a small fraction ends up in the accused being convicted.

Faith Line / Renuka Narayanan
Ugly feet are beautiful
An old, teenage love for the ballet refuses to die and I still collect ballet books in a mildly demented way. Last week I found a children’s book called Ballet Stories which was an anthology of fiction and extracts from the autobiographies of great ballerinas like Canadian Lynne Seymour and the ‘assoluta’, Margot Fonteyn.

Manali musings
Prime Minister Vajpayee has done enough in his three years in office to earn his place in history. But almost all of it on the national security and foreign policy front. If Jawaharlal Nehru had shaped India’s foreign policy for the Cold War era, Vajpayee and his able aides, external affairs minister Jaswant Singh and national security advisor Brajesh Mishra, have shaped it for the post-Cold War era. However, the Vajpayee government’s real challenge on the domestic front remains inadequately addressed.

Power Play / Neeraja Chowdhury
Why all moves backfire in J&K
We shall be bold and innovative designers of a future architecture of peace and prosperity for the entire South Asian region. So declared Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his New Year musings from Kumarakom. His latest move to invite General Pervez Musharraf for talks to Delhi is surely bold, but will it herald peace for the region?