We have elections coming up in five states, notably giant -- thus politically crucial -- Uttar Pradesh. We have an Indian cricket team seemingly determined to eat crow. We have yet another brouhaha over Salman Rushdie. But my electricity bill is in front of me, so I want to talk about food -- and those who prepare food. What, you may well wonder, is the connection between the two? The bill is made...

Campaigners have hailed Meredith Alexander's decision to quit the London Olympics' ethics watchdog over Dow Chemicals' sponsorship of the Games as “bold” and “principled.” “By speaking the truth so boldly Meredith has nailed Dow Chemical's lies that the London Olympic Committee and its Chairman Lord Coe believed and propagated till recently. We hope this will make the organisers dump Dow Chemical as a sponsor of the London Games,” said Rashida Bee,...

Poverty is concentrated in the informal sectors of the Indian economy, with people in these occupations amongst the worst affected from the pernicious Licence Quota Raid Raj. This is illustrated by the sarkari controls that trap the livelihoods of some of our nano entrepreneurs - cycle-rickshaw owners and pullers - in a web of illegality. Cycle-rickshaws are an inexpensive mode of commute in many cities, and do not cause any...

Activists fear that the government’s move to exempt the CBI from the Right to Information Act could have ulterior motives Kiran Bedi is convinced that the UPA government’s reluctance to give the proposed citizen’s ombudsman, the Lokpal, control of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the country’s premier investigation agency, is due to skeletons that lie buried deep in the agency’s cupboards.   The day Parliament was to discuss the Lokpal Bill,...

The Jaipur Literary Festival, a giddily chaotic celebration of the written word set on the grounds of a Rajasthan palace, ended in misery and embarrassment today, with the organizers bowing to pressure from local security forces and scotching plans for Salman Rushdie to “appear” at the festival, finally, by video link. Rushdie had already been forced to cancel plans to come to Jaipur after he had received intelligence reports—bogus intelligence,...