Death sentences are relatively common in India. While the 1980 case of Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab laid out a judicial proscription against capital punishment except in the “rarest of the rare cases,” judges have still handed out at least 50 such sentences every year over the past five years, including highs of 100-plus in both 2010 and 2011.
But despite having so many convicts on death row, executions are rare in India. According to the BBC, there have only been two executions in the past 12 years, and most convicts can expect to see their death sentences commuted to life in prison.
And now, growing doubts about the death penalty’s deterrent effect and fair application are fueling sentiment in favor of abolishing the death penalty entirely. In an interview with the Times of India published Aug. 29, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court AP Shah said that
“India should join [other abolitionist] nations as there is enough reason to believe that the legal safeguard
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
