A day after the Orissa government halted land acquisition for the controversial Posco project, its detractors observed Wednesday as a 'Black Day' to protest the anniversary of the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the state government and the steel giant six years ago. On Tuesday, the Jagatsinghpur district administration suspended land acquisition for the 12-million tonne steel plant project after protests escalated in Gobindpur village with leaders of the Congress, CPI,...

-PTI   Nearly six years after the Right to Information Act (RTI) was enacted, the Government has constituted a Special Task Force to ensure effective implementation of the Act and to bring in more transparency and accountability in governance. The task force is mandated to seek ways for effective implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act for proactive disclosures by the public authorities and to explore the possibility of prescribing simple...

After having been beaten black and blue by Team Anna, the Congress party and the government are finally waking up to take the Gandhian on even as media managers in the party have so far not come out actively against the anti-corruption crusaders. While a senior Congress leader made it clear that party chief Sonia Gandhi is unlikely to reply to the publicly distributed letter of Anna Hazare which complains against...

WHILE maintaining her support for a Lokpal institution, Aruna Roy, a prominent civil rights activist and a member of the National Advisory Council, took a critical position in respect of the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by the activists of the India Against Corruption campaign. A recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2000, she heads the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (a trade union of workers and peasants)...

Given the scale of corruption in India, the constitution of a Jan Lokpal will be a welcome initiative. But the proposed Lokpal has the makings of a super-monster. After 42 years of hesitation and uncertainty, an institutional mechanism to deal with the all-pervasive incidence of corruption in India is in sight. What apparently moved the state machinery was the agitation spearheaded by Anna Hazare, which drew spontaneous support primarily in the...