-The Hindu Communist Party of India MP D. Raja has expressed concern at the State governments notifying buffer zones in tiger reserves. He argued that the move would violate the livelihood rights of lakhs of people. In a letter, he asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to halt the exercise and ensure that the Supreme Court is informed of the actual legal and ground positions. Failure to do so will amount to violation...

-The Hindu There is at last some clarity on the politics of the anti-corruption movements. Baba Ramdev’s dramatic call for Congress- hatao and the ‘political turn’ of the Anna movement have confirmed that a movement aimed at rooting out corruption cannot defer a direct encounter with party politics for very long. The manner in which both decisions were announced left something to be desired. The announcement by ‘Team Anna’ invited serious...

-The Business Standard Beni Prasad Verma is wrong. Food inflation hurts more than 70% of Indian farmers  Poor Beni Prasad Verma! In Lucknow on Monday, Mr Verma, who is the Union minister for steel, spoke not on steel, but on inflation — and kicked up a row that his government, already under stress, could have easily done without. Mr Verma argued that higher prices for agricultural goods meant more gains for India’s...

-The Times of India The idea of a single National Health Mission to address the health challenges of the country's rural and urban population, as envisaged by the Planning Commission, is in the eye of a storm. The Union health ministry has made its stand clear that a uniform approach can never work. The letter written by the ministry to the Commission says that the health facilities in rural areas conform to a...

-The Hindustan Times The country is once again dangerously adrift in a stormy sea of competitive hate politics. The signs are both ominous and familiar — the systematic creation of hatred against people because of their ethnicity or religion; rumours and hate propaganda choking the internet; the public moral justification of violence against targeted communities on grounds of ‘larger’ alleged wrongs; and weak-kneed State action against people and organisations which preach...