If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it,' quipped Charles F Kettering , the famous American engineer and inventor of the electric starter. Well, the government has done just that! It has appointed an eight-member committee to examine ways to tackle black money. Perhaps that is too cynical! After all, the flurry of activity (the committee is only one of a series...

-The Deccan Chronicle   Acquiring farmers’ lands for industrial and other non-agricultural uses has been a cause of tension and unrest in different parts of the country in recent years. If Singur in West Bengal dramatically made history and firmly placed Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamul Congress in the lead in the politics of the state, the recent case of the twin villages of Bhatta-Parsaul at Noida in Uttar Pradesh, not...

-PTI   A desperate government's efforts failed today to achieve any breakthrough with Baba Ramdev deciding to go ahead with his indefinite fast here from tomorrow amidst indications that a compromise was likely in a day or two. For nearly five hours, two senior union ministers Kapil Sibal and Subodh Kant Sahay negotiated with the yoga guru over his demands on eradication of corruption at a posh hotel, a venue totally different...

-The Hindu   “Crackdown smacks of British action at Jallianwala Bagh” “I have a feeling June 2011 is going to become another turning point in the country's history” Wants President to take cognisance of all the events in the last six months Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L.K. Advani on Sunday described the arrest and removal of Baba Ramdev from the site of his hunger strike and the crackdown on his supporters as “naked...

The farmers' agitation in Uttar Pradesh brings into focus the indiscriminate acquisition of land by the state for corporate-led development. ON May 19, three days before the formal observation of the second anniversary of the United Progressive Alliance government, Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi made a categorical announcement that in the monsoon session of Parliament scheduled to begin in July the ruling coalition would bring in legislation that...