A recent article in the New York Times about India’s Right to Information law made me incredibly happy, because the power of this law demonstrates how law can be used to empower poor and marginalized parts of the population. Law is often vilified. By Americans, but also around the world. The common cartoon of a…
From Jurist: Indonesia’s justice minister announced Tuesday the opening of a prison wing intended to confine individuals convicted of corruption….The wing was added to alleviate overcrowding in the Indonesian prison system and was also in response to criticism that wealthy prisoners are permitted to live in luxury. Anti-corruption reform has been one of the primary…
In “Our Turn to Eat,” Michaela Wrong writes about Kenya: Kenya’s foreign partners failed to grasp that a system of rule based on the ‘Our Turn to Eat’ principle was explicitly designed to prevent the trickle-down upon which they counted for progress. The better Kenya’s economy fared, the more unstable the country actually became, because…
Recently, I’ve been reading a really great book — In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, by Edward Luce. I was born in India but moved to the U.S. at a young age – and yet, I recently felt that I didn’t know enough about my birthplace’s political scene. So I…