A court judgment delivered earlier this year holds important lessons for those engaged in investigating and fighting terrorism. Questioning the methods of terror investigation is always a challenge because it is so easily seen as defending the enemies of the nation. The exercise is monumentally difficult after a benumbing bomb attack — especially if it has been judged to be the work of a home-grown Islamist organisation. The raging anger at this...

In Rajasthan’s Neem ka Thana region, the echoes of mining Explosives are like clockwork, on the hour every hour. For some time now, another feature has become almost routine here: houses, left unsteady by the explosions, propped up by wooden poles or bricks. Tired of no recourse and continued government harassment, villages have begun a movement to stop illegal mining, primarily led by ex-army servicemen. It began on March 1 this year...

“The Right to Information (RTI) Act is a very powerful tool to fight the cancer of corruption, which is eating away at the vitals of the country,” stated former judge PM Dhakephalkar. He was speaking at a discussion on ‘Corruption ridden India’, organised by Community Aid and Sponsorship Programme (Casp) Prabodhan Mandal at SP College on Sunday. Apart from Dhakephalkar, resident editor of Pune edition of DNA, Abhay Vaidya, former director general...

Corruption, No. 1 national security threat, is eating into the vitals of the state, enfeebling internal security and crimping foreign policy.  India confronts several pressing national security threats. But only one of them — political corruption — poses an existential threat to the state, which in reality has degenerated into a republic of mega-scandals. The pervasive misuse of public office for private gain is an evil, eating into the vitals...

About three kilometers from this village, across dirt tracks and open scrubland, there is a settlement of seven mud huts bordered by millet and lentil fields. No electricity or telephone poles run to these huts. There’s not a satellite dish to be seen. In the dry, open land that surrounds the settlement — part of the great Thar Desert that dominates the western part of the state of Rajasthan — black...