-Live Mint India needs a law to check the menace of communal and caste violence. The arguments against it are spurious Among free India's gravest failures-along with its inability to end hunger, pervasive poverty and discrimination-is the continued targeting of people with violence and arson only because of their faith or caste. This periodic blood-letting, mass sexual assault and arson leaves a trail of great suffering of innocents, and repeated assaults...

-Governance Now Professor Sanjay Kumar, co-director of Lokniti, a research programme of the New Delhi-based think-tank Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and one of our leading ‘election watchers', maintains that we must not read too much in the higher voting numbers and credits the election commission for preparing more accurate voter rolls. Excerpts from an interview with Trithesh Nandan: * What do you make of the phenomenon of higher turnouts? Everybody...

-The Hindu     The political executive and the permanent executive should realise they are public servants first and work in harmony to achieve the constitutional objectives There is a need to arrest the ‘laal batti' [red beacon] culture in public governance. The Supreme Court of India has been delivering a variety of judgments on matters of public governance, and these have been the subject of debate and discussion. Some of these related to...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: With the general elections just four months away and rollout of UPA's flagship Food Security Act at stake, commerce minister Anand Sharma is facing a challenge that few of his eight predecessors who attended WTO ministerial meetings have faced. Already, there is a demand to block a compromise formula or a "peace clause" that will prevent any WTO member from seeking penalties against a developing country...

-The Hindu     Petroleum Ministry targets BPO, IT professionals and migratory population Seeking to target the new emerging segment of consumers such as IT professionals, BPO employees, migratory population and students who want LPG cylinder for their use but unable to provide proper proof of address (POA), the Petroleum Ministry has decided to focus on the sale of non-subsidised 5 kg LPG cylinders from petrol pumps beyond metro cities and extend it to...