-TheWire.in Swaraj Abhiyan founder Prashant Bhushan discusses the Essar tapes and other scams, the role of whistleblowers and his fallout with Arvind Kejriwal. Celebrated lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan has just notched up another victory with the Supreme Court-appointed panel decreeing there was prima facie evidence that former CBI director Ranjit Sinha had attempted to influence the investigation into the coal block allocation scam under the then UPA government. The court’s observation was based...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Government blames 'ghosts' for farmer suicides in Madhya Pradesh -Suchandana Gupta
-The Times of India BHOPAL: Three persons in Sehore district committed suicide under the influence of `bhoot aur pret (ghosts and spirits)'. This is the official explanation given by the Madhya Pradesh home department on Wednesday in reply to a question raised in the state assembly by Congress MLA from Ichawar constituency Shailendra Patel. Congress had asked for the exact number of suicides that have taken place in Sehore district between January...
More »MPs against ‘Great Indian Spit’ trick -Nistula Hebbar
-The Hindu The matter was raised during Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha to which the Health Minister, JP Nadda, could only promise that he would issue an advisory. New Delhi: Parliamentarians across party lines on Tuesday demanded that the mysteries of what one MP, KTS Tulsi, termed “the great Indian spit” be revealed through a scientific study. He held the view that the Indian habit of spitting was the cause of many...
More »From Plate to Plough: Twenty-five years of tinkering -Ashok Gulati
-The Indian Express Agriculture needs a champion in the Union cabinet. July, this year, marks the silver jubilee of economic reforms. It is time to take stock of our major successes and failures. There is a saying that bad times are often good for policies and good times are bad for policies. It is well-known that the foreign exchange crisis, with reserves falling to as low as $1.5 billion, triggered fundamental changes...
More »Panchayati Raj Ministry: A downgrade for democracy -Mani Shankar Aiyar
-The Hindu Confining it to just the Ministry of Rural Development would be the most retrograde step in democratic decentralisation in over a quarter century. If, as The Hindu’s exclusive on Wednesday indicates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi were to close down the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, it would confirm one’s worst fears about his government’s hypocritical approach to grass-roots democracy for grass-roots development. This was a lacuna that was evident in the ‘Gujarat...
More »