Various estimates of the extra cost to the government for an improved food security Bill are doing the rounds, but many agree the Union government’s proposed food subsidy bill would double. The proposed Bill offers 25 kg per family per month at Rs 3 a kg, to only families below the poverty line, or about 84 million households. Activists are insisting this be raised to 35 kg a family and to...

INSIDE his hovel of branches and rags, a grizzled pauper called Badshah Kale keeps a precious object. It is a note, scrawled by a policeman and framed by Mr Kale, proclaiming that he “is not a thief”. For members of his Pardhi tribe, who are among some 60m Indians considered criminal by tradition, this is treasure. Squatting beside Mr Kale, on a turd-strewn wasteland outside Ashti, a village in India’s western...

The fear of khap looms large over Haryana with 40 members of the Dalit (Valmiki) community at Mirchpur village in Hisar district — where two people were burnt alive by Jats last week — fleeing their homes, rattled by khap support of Jat violence against them. Their fears were compounded on Sunday when, in a khap meeting in Jind, 300 khap representatives called for intensifying the agitation against the Hindu...

The recent incident in Dantewada wherein the Maoists killed 76 CRPF jawans has triggered a heated debate about the establishment on one side and the Naxalites on the other. One section calls for strong action against the Naxalites, even calling them terrorists and urging the use of armed forces against them, while others defend the action of the Naxalites to the extent of justifying it. Hours and hours have been spent...

So, Shashi Tharoor has gone. Lalit Modi may follow. Or not.   Cricket’s great jamboree may be cleaned up. Or not.   Does it matter so much?   The Indian Premier League (IPL) brouhaha could not have come at a worse time. India was, finally, if reluctantly, starting to focus on long-festering-but-urgent issues that prevent this country from being a just, equitable democracy. As Tharoor and Modi self-destructed, the circus around them diverted all...