At half past four on the morning of July 2, a gang of Naxals donning Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) uniforms swooped down on the jagged Raunakabad hills and surrounded the tribal village of Kareili in Bihar's Munger district. The band, numbering 60-odd, massed in front of the village mukhiya's house and began rounding up a score of indigent Koda tribals at gun-point. The captives were beaten with INSAS rifle-butts...

The government ignores the NAC, puts out a diluted draft bill on food security As many as 46 per cent of the malnourished children of the world—of whom at least 75,000 die every month—are in India. Another alarming official statistic—36 per cent of Indians live on less than Rs 20 a day. One would think figures like this would act as a reality check for a government that proudly chants...

Prakash Karat has decided to share a dais with civil society activists Prashant Bhushan and Aruna Roy, stirring debate in the CPM which largely considers NGOs and their members “anti-Left” and accuses them of furthering the “imperialist strategy”. Some in the CPM believe the general secretary’s presence at the public meeting against corruption will amount to extending legitimacy to the “action groups”, the party’s name for voluntary organisations. Others, though, see Karat...

In a week when the central food ministry is reviewing the functioning of the much-maligned public distribution system (PDS) and plans to pull up laggard states on poor storage facilities, low grain offtake, high diversion and a persistently slacking programme, an objective relook at the world’s largest grain distribution system is imperative. Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has time and again emphasised that streamlining the PDS in the usual-suspect states to...

This essay describes and compares Parliament and the Supreme Court and examines the relationship between them. Parliament may still be a great institution, but its members are no longer great men. How long can a great institution remain great in the hands of small men? The SC has held its place in the public esteem rather better than the Lok Sabha, despite the occasional allegation of financial impropriety. Parliament, the...