Anna Hazare's fast puts Jan Lokpal on the nation's agenda, but doubts remain whether it will help root out corruption. A FUTURE historian who browses the archives of Indian newspapers and news websites from April 5 to 10 will be confused over how to characterise the groundswell of public support across the country for the “fast unto death” undertaken at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi, by a social activist not...

In less than a fortnight of its formation, the joint committee for drafting the Lokpal Bill is falling apart. Even as civil society representatives Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan are battling attacks on their integrity, another civil society leading light, Justice N Santosh Hegde, is thinking of quitting the panel. Stung by Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh's references to his ineffectuality in dealing with corruption in Karnataka, Hegde, who is the...

Admitting that there was "growing feeling" amongst people that present systems were ineffective in dealing with corruption, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said he hoped to bring the more stringent anti-graft Lokpal (ombudsman) Bill in the monsoon session of parliament. Addressing Bureaucrats of the country at a function here, Manmohan Singh stressed that his government was accelerating its efforts to create a systemic response to curb graft practices in India. "Our...

India’s apex planning body may cap national poverty at 32% for the purpose of calculating welfare benefits in the 12th Five-year Plan that starts on 1 April 2012, it said a day before a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The development comes on a day the Supreme Court asked Montek Singh Ahluwalia to respond why it should not strike down an earlier cap of 36% poverty after the government sought...

Irom Sharmila Chanu and Anna Hazare have one thing in common – the ability to fast indefinitely for what they perceive is right. But the similarities end there. She has been on a political fast for 11 years but her silent resilience moves you when you realize the sheer magnitude of what she is single-handedly trying to achieve. Far from the glare of studio lights of television channels and tangled wires of...