Corporate Crime Condoned
Nityanand Jayaraman
The Dubey murder and the Sangamner poisoning are instances of corporate crime - of a crime perpetrated by a business interest against workers, consumers, the government, communities or shareholders. The engagement of women with the corporate world is threefold: as worker, as consumers and as citizens. A company can poison an entire reservoir or river, wipe out a town, run away with your grandmother's term deposit, on convert the sacred lands of native people to radioactive wastelands.


The Corporate Camouflage
An understanding of some of the classic examples of corporate criminal liability that have been developed through the previous century is needed when examining whether or not corporate liability is an area which is in need of reform. This article looks at classic and emergent theories of Corporate Criminal Liability.

Vanishing Companies
Sonu Chhina
Inspite of the ring -fencing in the market, companies continue to vanish into the maze of regulations, looting our investors. Of the 5,651 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, 2,750 have vanished (as of March 2003). Rs. 10,000 crores is grand total of the investors' blocked funds; the number of investors - 11 million. SEBI, RBI, the Department of Company Affairs (DCA) have not documented the whereabouts of the 2,750 co- mpanies. The market regulators are unable to penalise them or recover their funds.

Loosing Ground Beneath her Feet
Geeta Seshu
The engagement of women with the corporate world is threefold: as worker, as consumers and as citizens. Whether as victims of the Bhopal gas disaster, the Enron collapse, or at work in the mining industry, at the tea gardens, and as vulnerable consumers and guinea pigs for market experiments, the article illustrates how women today are victims of corporate crimes both in and out of their workplace.

Muted Labour
Lina Mathias
With increasing globalisation workers find themselves being pushed against the wall. Whether it is the workers of engineering companies who have nowhere to lead protest demonstrations to because the 'management' has simply shifted base, the mill workers who get their share of limelight when one among them commits suicide or adivasi migrant labour left without wages by crooked contractors hired by big public sector and private companies, the avenues for redressal are pitifully few.

Integrity in Pharamceutical Industry
Vinod Shetty
Pfizer's termination of its employees brings to light kickbacks and dubious business practises.

Too Hot to Handle
The recent Supreme Court judgment on double taxation in UOI vs. Azadi Bachao Andolan, raises concerns about the role of the court will come to play in view of increasing globalization.

Use and abuse of workers
Sunil Scaria
In the past 10 years, the Indian people's Tribunal was called to investigate into human rights and environmental violation by corporate houses. The investigations have revealed the absence of corporate accountability or mechanisms to ensure accountability in the future.

Continuing Toxic Legacy - Bhopal
Satinath Sarangi
The world's worst industrial disaster occurred in Bhopal in 1984. Close to 8,000 people died within the first three days of the disaster. These can only be regulated by deterrent criminal justice.

The Chemical Cocktail
Kavitha Kuruganti
The Supreme Court on 22nd April 2003, admitted a Civil Writ petition field by Srishti, on increasing contamination of food items in India by pesticides and other toxics. This PIL is demanding that India ban all those deadly pesticides that have been banned in other countries, among other things.

Bureaucratic Travails
Arun Bhatia
Few people know that I was transferred in the midst of the inspection of the second Glaxo factory at Nasik. Just a few days after that inspection commenced I was removed from the post! I was then the Commissioner, Food and Drugs Administration.

Education La Enron
Ketan Tanna
Buoyed by its success in co-opting the political leadership in Maharashtra, Enron also indulged in rampant human rights abuses. The sad part is that while Enron will eventually pay for all its sordid underhand deals in the USA, it need not worry about whether law will catch up with its shenanigans in India

Corporate Criminal Liability : An International Comparative Study
In an era of corporate collapses it has become absolutely de rigueur to understand the concept of corporate criminal liability in the international context. It is high time that the Indian legislature wakes up to the stark reality and exhibits its innate wisdom in creating a suitable response to corporate crimes.

Other issues:

World Social Forum
Making 'Another World' Possible
The WSF has grown from the first forum in 2001 to the current forum in 2004 not only in numbers but also as a space from where voices emerge articulating alternatives to build this 'Another World'.

Debate
World Social Forum - Space or Movement?
'Globalisation', a misleading word for the current onslaught by imperialism, can be resisted, and even defeated, by a combination of struggles at various levels and forces fighting 'globalisation' will need to join hands in the struggle against it. However, a careful analysis reveals that the World Social Forum is not an instrument of such struggle.

Just Another Diversion

Labour
Is there a Right to Strike?
Anirudh Rastogi & Siddharth Srivastava
A critique of T.K. Rangarajan v. Govt. of Tamil Nadu

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