-Down to Earth blog Simply put, the sand mafias originated because the sand business is low investment, low risk and high returns, notwithstanding few roadblocks like Ms Durga Shakti Nagpal or the media taking up her cause as a cause celebre! For they know well that with raw material (sand) in easy reach and end user (realty sector) little bothered wherefrom or legality of the ware, business as usual, no matter, shall...

-The Hindu Building on the work by RTI activists, India needs to set up a mechanism that can make for accountability on the sources and utilisation of party funds Throughout the world, political parties collect funds to build and sustain the organisation, to train party cadres and fight elections. Recognising that they are the main link to the citizens (as voters) and, by implication, the mainstay of democracy, many countries, including India,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Even as the Election Commission plans consultations with political parties in the first week of August on a recent Supreme Court order seeking framing of guidelines for parties' poll manifestoes, senior commission officials are in a dilemma on how to define a "freebie" in the first place. The poll watchdog plans to sound out all recognized national and state parties in the first week of August...

-The Hindu The government has come good on its promise to put in place a food security architecture but the manner in which it has pushed through the historic measure, which gives roughly 67 per cent of the population a legal right over cheap food grains, suggests it was done with an eye on the 2014 general election. The ordinance route is an extraordinary move, considered legitimate only in situations of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Any promise of freebies such as television sets or laptops by political parties affects the level playing field and "shakes the root of free and fair elections", the Supreme Court has held. The court, however, clarified that such promises cannot be labelled "corrupt practice" under the existing laws and dismissed a petition challenging the competitive distribution of freebies by the AIADMK and the DMK during elections in Tamil...