-The Times of India With the UPA government's efforts to build a consensus on allowing foreign retailers in the multi-brand retail sector going nowhere, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday urged the UPA allies to help evolve a consensus on the reforms measure. Participating in the first meeting of the newly set-up UPA co-ordination committee, PM said that it was necessary to build support for the move to let in foreign retailers. The...

The Guwahati molestation incident throws light on the violence women face overtly and covertly in India, at home and outside. The shocking incident of the beating and molestation of a young woman by a mob in Guwahati in Assam on July 9 has exposed the ugly underbelly of modern, globalised India, where women face violence, covertly and overtly, at home and outside. The incident has also exposed the lackadaisical manner in...

-The Hindu Public Interest Litigation is a good thing when it is used to enforce the rights of the disadvantaged. But it has now been diluted to interfere with the power of the government to take decisions on a range of policy matters Judicial activism is not an easy concept to define. It means different things to different persons. Critics denounce judicial decisions as activist when they do not agree with them....

-The Hindu What started as a dismal monsoon has since gone from bad to worse. It reached the subcontinent a few days late and its progress northwards thereafter was anything but vigorous. By the end of June, large swathes of the country had received hardly any rain and the nationwide rainfall deficit soared to 29 per cent. Even at that stage, however, there was a chance that the monsoon could recover...

-The Hindustan Times Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said on Saturday that the state’s present drought-like situation could turn into a greater calamity than Maharashtra’s drought of 1972. Pawar was speaking to the media after a meeting with his party leaders and district cadre to review the scarcity scenario. He said that while there have been forecasts of rain for the next four months, the rainfall predicted was  not satisfactory. “In the...