The Latest: Top stories of the day
1. A Delhi court has released Abdul Karim Tunda, who was charged with being a bomb expert for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, for lack of evidence.
2. As banks move to recover money owed by Kingfisher Airlines Limited, the Debt Recovery Tribunal stalls Diageo deal with businessman Vijay Mallya.
3. President Pranab Mukherjee will skip the Art of Living event, which is held on the Yamuna floodplains and has run into trouble for flouting environmental regulations.
4. Delhi government has reportedly ordered legal action against television channels that aired doctors videos of the Jawaharlal Nehru University protest.

The Big Story: By her rules

Inevitably, on Women's Day, talk turns to the women's reservations bill, passed by the Rajya Sabha in 2010 but put in cold storage since then. President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Hamid Ansari have called for reviving the legislation, which would reserve one-third of the seats in Parliament and state legislatures for women. Prime Minister Narendra Modi contented himself by saying only women should speak in Parliament on Women's Day.

Ever since it was first floated, the women's reservation bill has been touted as the magic cure that would end gender inequalities in politics. Reservation for women in panchayats and municipal bodies, effected in 1993, has indeed increased the presence of women in local politics. As of 2008, it had gone up from 4.5% before reservation to 40%. But representation alone has not been enough to empower women's voices in politics. Too often, female candidates are fielded by more powerful male relatives trying to get around the quota or invited to local body meetings just to complete the quorum. This has meant that they have had a limited say in actual decision-making.

For reservations to be meaningful, they have to be accompanied by other incremental battles: the economic empowerment of women, better education, better healthcare. Most of all, it means the slow and painful process of changing the societal attitudes that control and silence women, trivialise their concerns and opinions. These are battles that lie outside that law.

Politicking and policying
1. In West Bengal, the Left reaches an "understanding" with the Congress but clarifies they are not in an alliance for the assembly polls.
2. In Jammu and Kashmir, People's Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti says the decision taken by her father, the late Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, to forge an alliance with the Bharatiya Janta Party was "written in stone".
3. In Assam, the Congress finds a Bodo ally in the United People's Party, after the BJP tied up with the Bodoland People's Front for the assembly elections.

Punditry
1. In the Indian Express, Martha Nussbaum on how dissent has lost ground in Tagore's India.
2. In the Hindu, RK Raghavan says reports of bureaucrats being browbeaten by the Centre in the Ishrat Jahan case must be looked into, and relations between the Central Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence Bureau repaired.
3. In the Business Standard, Shreekant Sambrani argues the fight for equal rights for women cannot be won by law alone.

Don't Miss...
Supriya Sharma on large-scale atrocities carried out by the police in Chhattisgarh villages:

For several days late in January, residents of Chintagufa woke up to a regular sight: columns of young men and women from nearby villages walking with their heads lowered, being led into the police station by armed security men. Within hours, a trickle of older people, women and children from those villages would follow. They would gather outside the thana, camping there, often for days and nights, pleading with the police to free their loved ones being held captive. Occasionally, a few people would be released, only to be replaced by a new lot of detainees from other villages.