Judicial gag orders are as abhorrent as executive restraints on the media   Some interim orders issued by the courts have restrained publication or comment on certain matters of public importance. Orders imposing judicial censorship on the media have been extremely rare. Except in the rarest of rare cases, judicial “gag orders” are as abhorrent as executive restraints on the media. The changed SITuation calls for a comment on these judicial orders and...

-PTI   The first unit of the Kundankulam nuclear power project is expected to start generating electricity in the next 40 days, Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office V Narayanasamy said on Monday. He said the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) officials were at the Kudankulam project SITe and inspecting the plant. "The first reactor of 1000 MW will be operational within 40 days from today," Narayanasamy told reporters here. He said the...

MGNREGA can only succeed if politics is taken seriously in the design of accountability mechanisms Does political competition enhance a poor person’s access to anti-poverty initiatives such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA)? Just as some economists believe that competition is an effective way to improve management and productivity, in politics too, some hold that political competition is better than single-party monopoly, because it forces political parties...

-The Hindu Sleuths from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) conducted searches in 12 locations in Lucknow district on Saturday in connection with the multi-crore foodgrains scam in Uttar Pradesh. The scam relates to sale of wheat and rice — meant for distribution to the poor — in the black market from 2002 to 2007, and was estimated to be of the order of around Rs. 35,000 crore. The locations included those in...

-The Times of India GUWAHATI: Hundreds of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) activists were prevented by police from staging a demonstration in the Golaghat district on Saturday. KMSS claimed that four of their members were injured when police used force to stop their procession, which was heading towards the sub-division office. The activists were also detained. "We were about 300 people in the procession. We planned the protest after the district administration...