-PTI   The government on Tuesday wondered why Team Anna keeps on issuing warnings when the Centre has repeatedly announced its commitment to bring a strong Lokpal Bill at the earliest. "This has been said by Anna and his associates many times. Before campaigning against Congress in Hisar also, they had said that they would compel the government to bring Lokpal bill... I do not know why they are making such statements when...

Six years of RTI’s existence has empowered the Indian citizen as a  proactive partner in governance like never before since Independence. But the government has not been able to digest it, ever since its implementation. Instead of trying to dilute or scuttle the Act, it’s time the government abides by Section (4) norms of ‘suo motu’ disclosure Apart from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose innocence and ‘clean image’ stands exposed thanks...

When Munni arrived in this fertile, sugarcane-growing region of north India as a young bride years ago, little did she imagine she would be forced into having sex and bearing children with her husband's two brothers who had failed to find wives. "My husband and his parents said I had to share myself with his brothers," said the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari, sitting in a village...

-EPW   The Anna Hazare group’s foray into electoral politics exposes its shaky foundations. The script of this drama was already written. A single issue campaign, focused narrowly on corruption in public life without a wider world view on the root causes of corruption or on the myriad other problems afflicting Indian society, had to come apart at the seams at some point. That moment arrived when “Team Anna”, as the people behind...

Biraj Patnaik, principal adviser to the Supreme Court commissioners on the right to food, is up in arms against the National Food Security Bill. “Despite multiple meetings and many suggestions put forward, what we have is a mockery of a bill. The government has made a dog’s breakfast out of the right to food bill,” he exclaims. Patnaik’s is not a one-off complaint. Some argue that the country’s law-making process is...