Should the Right to Information Act be renamed the Right to Ignorance Act? Despite the introduction of the RTI Act, India continues to be an information-poor and, consequently, ignorance-rich country. The official policy seems to be that public ignorance is sarkari bliss. Thanks to the Official Secrets' Act (one of the less desirable relics of British rule, under the colonial regime largely used to suppress nationalist sentiment and activity) India...
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Family matters by Vir Sanghvi
Each time I complain about the influence of dynasty on Indian politics, I get the usual responses: we are a democracy so if people vote for the sons and daughters of politicians, how can you complain? Or: in India, everything from business to movies is about dynasty so why should politics be any different? And so on. I do not deny that there is some merit in the response. But...
More »CPM’s slide deeper than diagnosed
Calcutta, Oct 20: The CPM central committee appears to have underestimated the decline in the party’s vote in Bengal in the Lok Sabha polls last May. The final poll data compiled by the National Election Study (NES) now shows that the decline in the party’s — and the Left Front’s — vote was sharper than what had been calculated earlier. Also, the erosion was spread across all social groups, including...
More »A candle in the wind by P Sainath
In Maharashtra, where issues hurl themselves at you, the Opposition failed to mount a strong campaign on a single one of them. The front rows of the Mumbai-Nagpur flight are usually the province of the political class: MLAs to MPs, ministers and fixers. This time, though, quite a few of the occupants were celebrities: television and film stars, major and minor, middling and mediocre. It wasn’t the T-20 cricket match in...
More »Maharashtra polls: all fronts and no back by P. Sainath
Will the Congress-NCP gain from a multiplicity of fronts which could dissipate the anti-Congress vote? Or will the Shiv Sena-BJP benefit from the Third Front’s cutting into the Congress-NCP vote? Whatever the failings of Maharashtra’s political class, and these are many, a lack of optimism is not among them. Even after the last date for the withdrawal of nominations to the Assembly elections, there are more fronts, real and imagined,...
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