The Supreme Court's environment panel, Central Empowered Committee (CEC), on Friday concurred with the Karnataka Lokayukta to report rampant illegal iron ore mining in Chitradurga and Tumkur districts and recommended a complete ban on private mining. Submitting the CEC's report to a bench of Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justices Aftab Alam and Swatanter Kumar, amicus curiae A D N Rao said the adverse impact on environment in these two...

While the rest of the world is saluting the birth of a miracle - the manifestation of the best of the human spirit in a peaceful movement that is uniting millions of people across religions, geographies and social and economic groups - Arundhati Roy has seized the opportunity to be intellectually irreverent. Sadly, her vituperative dismissal of this powerful human revolution in her piece, ‘I would rather not be Anna' published...

There are two broad governance issues that concern every citizen in this country today: corruption at different levels in the government, and grievances arising from the government’s poor functioning. The last few months have seen an outpouring of emotions related to these issues. It is amply clear that the people of India want no one to be above the law; everyone, irrespective of the position they hold, should be accountable. ...

In the current hullabaloo about the lok pal bill and the Anna agitation, one question has frequently been raised, both by protagonists of the Congress and the government and by constitutionalists and legal experts: however laudable the goals of Anna and his supporters, aren’t the methods adopted by them illegitimate? Doesn’t a fast unto death amount to blackmail of the legislature? Isn’t it an attempt by the unelected to usurp...

The substitution of one man for the people, and the reduction of the people's role merely to being supporters and cheerleaders for one man's actions, is antithetical to democracy. The Central Government's flip-flops on Anna Hazare are obvious: it went from abusing him (through the Congress spokesperson) for sheltering corruption, to extolling him for his idealism; from arresting him, without any justification, and getting him remanded to judicial custody for a...