The roller-coaster ride of the government-civil society joint drafting committee on the Lokpal (ombudsman) Bill has ended in a draw, but left both sides badly injured. Whether the tie will be broken when they present their separate recommendations to a proposed all-party committee in July remains an open question. Yet, this is a good time to draw up a balance-sheet of the government's first-ever effort to take on board civil...

The United Progressive Alliance government may have shown a willingness to draft a new Lokpal Bill, but it is dragging its feet on a proposal to strengthen the public institution that has done so much to expose wrongdoings in public life: the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG). For the past two years, the CAG has been pushing the Finance Ministry — its nodal ministry — for crucial changes in the 1971 Audit...

-PTI   Yoga guru Ramdev, who is on an indefinite hunger strike against black money and corruption, today made public details of his business empire worth over Rs 1,100 crore, claiming everything was in order. On his sixth day of fast, Ramdev addressed a press conference here during which his close aide Balakrishna said that the capital involving the four trusts run by him totalled Rs 426.19 crore while the expenditure incurred...

The farmers' struggle against land acquisition only shows that from passive forms of protest they have turned to active forms of resistance. THE recent agitation by farmers in Uttar Pradesh against cropland acquisition for non-agricultural purposes is only the latest in a long series of protests by farmers and rural communities, which started a decade ago in different parts of the country and which gathered momentum over the past five...

Cash transfers are now suggested by many as a silver bullet for addressing the problems that plague India’s anti-poverty programmes. This article argues instead for evidence-based policy and informed public debate to clarify the place, prospects and problems of cash transfers in India. By drawing on key empirical findings from academic and grey literature across the world an attempt is made to draw attention to three aspects of cash transfers...