-The Hindu   Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is to meet a small group of editors on Wednesday morning to discuss issues ranging from corruption charges against the government to continuing inflation and unemployment. The informal interaction comes days after the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, which took stock of the current political situation. Some CWC members were reportedly of the view that Dr. Singh should engage the media more often and dispel...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

Last week, an enterprising resident welfare association in Ghaziabad organised a registration camp for unique identification (UID) numbers. It found people queuing up till midnight for a week with infants, grandmothers and some with domestic workers in tow. No one had a clue as to how UID was different from the several other identity documents each of them had been scrupulously accumulating and treasuring. They were initially informed that all they...

Many in India feel betrayed that neoliberal economic policies have not ended but increased fraud and corruption Corruption is not exactly new in India. Quite apart from the extensive historical evidence of its spread, during and after the "mixed economy" period of state planning, the "licence-permit raj" was regularly accused by commentators of breeding graft, constraining economic activity and forcing citizens to be at the mercy of corrupt officialdom at all...

Questions the logic behind the exclusion of the Prime Minister from the purview of the Lokpal Accusing the Govt. of betraying civil society and not being serious about fighting corruption Social activist Anna Hazare has said civil society's aim is to vest autonomy in the Lokpal, much on the lines of the Election Commission, the Supreme Court and the RTI (Central Information Commission). Control of bureaucracy He, however, favoured keeping the bureaucracy out of...