-The Hindu   Rajya Sabha MP and Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi chaired the 30-member parliamentary panel that presented its voluminous report earlier this month on the Lokpal Bill 2011. The report has points of divergence with both the official Lokpal Bill draft and the Team Anna version. (The Union Cabinet on Tuesday night approved a Bill for the creation of the Lokpal with constitutional status that will have no control over the...

Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, in an article on left-wing extremism (“From Tirupati to Pashupati?” The Hindu , October 14, 2011), observed candidly: “It is not the naxals who have created the ground conditions ripe for their ideology — it is the singular failure of successive governments both in the States and the Centre.” There lay the main cause of the festering sore of naxalism, often characterised as left-wing...

Kandhamal was not a spontaneous outburst of mass anger. And the victims still await justice. It was a terrifying Christmas in 2007 for tribal and dalit Christians who live in the second poorest, deeply forested district of Odisha, Kandhamal. Long-smouldering violence targeting them exploded, and was to continue to rage for another full year. During this time, 600 villages were ransacked, 5,600 houses were looted and burnt, 54,000 persons rendered homeless,...

Dalit political parties irked by Centre's unwillingness to allocate the entire 12.5-acre India United Mill plot for the proposed Dr BR Ambedkar memorial stepped up agitations across the city on Thursday. Hundreds of activists of Republican Party of India (Athavale) teamed up with another Dalit outfit, the Republican Sena and staged a blockade on the Eastern Express Highway, throwing traffic out of gear. The protesters burnt effigies of Prime Minister...

Our democracy is creaking, but it works—nominally at least. What it needs is not dilution, but deepening. When “Too Much Democracy” Works     Pressure in Parliament pushes PM Manmohan Singh to secure the resignation of telecom minister A. Raja in the 2G affair     The angst and trials of tribals in the Maoist bastion of Dantewada is sensed in Delhi after the media highlights their plight     People power at the sites of...