If home minister P Chidambaram’s recent letter to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is any indication, it has taken the Union home ministry seven years to realise that arming civilians to fight Naxalites is a bad idea. How much longer will it take for them to realise that the current paramilitary-based approach in Chhattisgarh is similarly bound to fail? From 2003 onwards, the home ministry has followed a policy of...

A CBI probe has indicted a former chairman of India’s technical education regulator for approving increased student intake by a private engineering college 10 years ago despite the institution lacking adequate infrastructure. The indictment of R. Natarajan comes days after the agency had nailed the now-suspended All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) chairman, R.A. Yadav, in another corruption case. Natarajan was head of the AICTE when the regulator allowed the Chennai-based...

The CBI's record in the Jain hawala case was disappointing. But there are powerful elements in favour of unravelling the truth in the 2G scam. On December 16, 2010, the Supreme Court (Justices G.S. Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly, ) ordered a comprehensive and thorough investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate into what has become notorious as “the 2G scam.” The investigation, into spectrum allocation from...

India's income tax department has ruled that illegal commissions were paid to an Italian businessman accused over an arms scandal which ended Rajiv Gandhi's term as prime minister 20 years ago. It found over $9m was paid as commissions to Ottavio Quattrocchi and an Indian arms dealer, Win Chadha. In 2009, India dropped a graft case against Mr Quattrocchi and withdrew his name from the Interpol "wanted list". The main opposition BJP has...

Hidden behind all the administrative scandals that rocked India in 2010, illegal mining is an unnoticed beast that has been eating into the country's soul.   While corruption in spectrum allocation and the conduct of the Commonwealth Games are primarily about monetary loot, illegal mining is about invaluable non-renewable natural resources.   In at least five major states, there were more than 20,000 complaints of illegal mining filed, but the perpetrators carried on with...