Dayanand's World

Simplifying legal and procedural hurdles in completing a housing project and eliminating corruption will do far more to address housing shortage in the city than redeveloping clusters The Maharashtra government has ‘in principle’ accepted the revised recommendations of a study group on Cluster Development scheme for Mumbai. The scheme envisages redevelopment of old buildings, extending the existing redevelopment policy to all buildings more than 30 years old. The new policy applies to suburbs as well, with a minimum plot size of 10,000 square meters (sq m). Under the new proposal, owner’s consent has also been reduced from 100% to 70%, while the government retains its discretionary power to approve or reject redevelopment projects. "This is being done to encourage housing societies and developers take up bigger plots for development under the scheme. The policy will help create proper infrastructure, wider roads, more parking slots, gardens and open spaces… it will also im...

WHO IS RIGHT – ISRAEL OR HAMAS…AND INSIGHT IN THE INTERNATIONAL LAW’S VIEWS ON THE MATTER. International law has quite a lot to say about the latest violence that has flared up between Israel and Hamas. So do the media. Unfortunately, they rarely match, leading to unfortunate — and sometimes egregious — misrepresentations. In an age when both real and perceived violations of international law have a substantial effect on the legitimacy of state action, getting it wrong is way more than just bad journalism. The core purpose of the law of war — a centuries-old framework regulating conduct during wartime — is to protect civilians and minimize suffering during wartime. In any conflict, all parties — states, rebel groups, terrorist organizations — have obligations to minimize harm to civilians. For each party, these obligations take two primary forms: protecting civilians in the areas where it is attacking, and protecting its own civilians from the consequences of attac...