Bills aimed at making judges, public utilities more accountable, and protecting whistleblowers The Union Cabinet on Tuesday cleared three crucial anti-graft Bills aimed at making judges and public utilities more accountable and protecting whistleblowers. The Bills come at a time when the government is being attacked by both the opposition and anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare​ and his team. Analysts are doubtful about the intentions of the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). The...

The government believes it is more important to be seen to be doing things than to be doing them well. The proposed food security legislation is another example of this tendency. The legislation exemplifies the self-defeating obduracy of bureaucratic modes of thinking. But the debate around it also exemplifies a failure of intellectual argument in India. Our debates often have this character. First, we spend a lot more time arguing...

-The Telegraph   The corruption scandals surrounding the Commonwealth Games may have been a blot on India’s political class, but that has not stopped them from asking for a share in the Games Village flats. Samajwadi Lok Sabha member Shailender Kumar today demanded an MPs’ quota in the allotment of the 715 unsold Games flats, the cheapest of which would fetch at least Rs 1 crore in the market. The other House members...

-The Hindu   Not a single person should die this winter from the freezing cold: Supreme Court Expressing concern over the lot of homeless persons during the winter, the Supreme Court on Monday directed Delhi and other States to ensure that adequate shelters were provided for night stay. The Bench observed that not a single person must be allowed to die from having to sleep on the pavement in the freezing cold. A Bench...

How deluded we are when we think that when an important piece of legislation is introduced, policymakers carefully scrutinise it for some room for improvement. Indian democracy is good at passing progressive-sounding legislation that becomes unpopular later for poor implementation and a consequent feeling of letdown and therefore resentment. Often the problems of poor implementation that surface later stem from small mistakes in design that could have been corrected at...