As Anna Hazare was being whisked away in a SUV, a Rajouri Garden trader turned to the hassled cops, who had wrestled with him and thousands of others to ensure smooth passage for the activist's vehicle, and pleaded with folded hands "Thank you so much sir". Red-faced, the cops looked away. Delhi rediscovered Gandhigiri on Tuesday when the West is veering towards violent protests and their aggressive stifling. For instance, last...

The development of Bt brinjal was a case of bio-piracy, according to the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA). According to sources, the NBA has finally concluded its year-long investigation and recommended action against the U.S. agri-business giant Monsanto and its Indian collaborators who developed and promoted the controversial, genetically modified vegetable. A decision to “take the case to its logical conclusion” was taken at an NBA meeting on June 20, according to...

Its facets include concentration of media ownership and the transformation of news into a commodity. THE last two decades have witnessed a dramatic transformation of India's ‘mediascape' – a term first used by Arjun Appadurai, an academic of Indian origin based in the United States, to describe how visual imagery impacts the world and to describe and situate the role of the mass media in global cultural flows. While there...

After the brutal murder of Azad, is there any hope for well-meaning routine calls for “dialogue” and “peace talks”? What can the "civil society" do as a serious, real intervention? It is reported that the decades-old talks with Naga insurgent groups has made some progress recently (See “Differences ‘narrowed’,” Times of India, July 19, 2011). One reason why talks have a chance in these cases is that separatism comes in...

-Express News Service   The Supreme Court on Wednesday quashed the invocation of emergency clause by the Mayawati government to acquire private land for the construction of a district jail without hearing objections raised by the aggrieved land owners. “The series of events shows lethargy and lackadaisical attitude of the state government,” a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and H L Dattu observed against the manner in which the state government...