Do we, the Indian middle class, see the corruption within us? I was too busy being corrupt to join Anna Hazare’s camp last week. For four days, I heard nothing but stories of our Tahrir Square-like revolution against the corrupt unfurling right under our noses in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. But it was school admission time and I had some serious palm-greasing, document-fudging, string-pulling, weight-throwing and tout-chasing to do. I had...

It's that time of the year when Jharkhand celebrates the Sarhul festival. As saal trees sprout new leaves and blossom in leafless forests, tribals troop to the village 'saran sthal' (place to pray) to worship nature. White and red striped flags flutter along a cratered road snaking through Latehar's hilly terrain, from Rajdanda to Barahi. Construction of this road in Latehar's Mahuadanr block, around 120km from Ranchi, began last year. After...

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh has questioned the “huge” funding for social activist Anna Hazare's hunger strike in New Delhi to demand a Lokpal Bill, and asked whether politicians were uncivilised and could not be members of civil society. Speaking at the Press Club here on Saturday, he claimed that Rs.50 lakh was spent on Mr. Hazare's four-day agitation at Jantar Mantar. “When we demanded that it should be brought out...

Two renowned forensic experts have established that the Shanti Bhushan tape where he purportedly asks for Money to fix a case was fabricated, vindicating Prashant Bhushan and his colleagues in the India Against Corruption campaign who had maintained that the CD was spliced. Armed with reports from US-based acoustic phonetics expert George Papcun and S R Singh, former director of Central Forensic Science Laboratory who is now with Hyderabad-based Truth Labs,...

Investigation in the Hasan Ali case has reached a crucial stage with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) deciding to question Puducherry lieutenant governor Iqbal Singh and UP chief minister Mayawati's principal secretary Vijay Shankar Pandey in the $8 billion Money-laundering probe. While summons were issued to Iqbal Singh on Friday, ED is likely to issue notice to Pandey in the next few days asking him to appear for questioning, sources said. Faced with...