-The Hindu   The government's decision on a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for minorities within the overall 27 per cent reservation for the backward classes promises to be the new trigger for a heated political discourse just ahead of several Assembly elections, including the all-important poll in Uttar Pradesh just a few months away. More than a decade ago, the V.P. Singh government ushered in the ‘Mandal revolution' in North India. It...

The setting aside of 50% of seats in the proposed Lokpal for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, women and minorities, triggered a sharp debate within parties today around a central, normative question: should social diversity, especially inclusion of minorities, weigh in an empowered body to “fight corruption?”   While the BJP has opposed it and Team Anna, caught off-guard on a sensitive political issue, has declined to comment, legal experts...

Dalit political parties irked by Centre's unwillingness to allocate the entire 12.5-acre India United Mill plot for the proposed Dr BR Ambedkar memorial stepped up agitations across the city on Thursday. Hundreds of activists of Republican Party of India (Athavale) teamed up with another Dalit outfit, the Republican Sena and staged a blockade on the Eastern Express Highway, throwing traffic out of gear. The protesters burnt effigies of Prime Minister...

-IANS   Concerned over the poor 11 percent fund utilisation of the Rahul Gandhi-driven Bundelkhand package worth Rs.7,000 crore, the central government will review its performance Monday.   Following Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi's intervention, the central government had sanctioned Rs.7,000 crore package two years ago for development of the backward Bundelkhand region, spread across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.   Even as politics hots up in the run up to the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections...

Here's the wonderful thing about the FDI-in-retail debate: never have struggling Indian farmers found so many champions. They've been crawling out of the woodwork. Foreign direct investment in retail may be on hold, but Hillary Clinton can stop worrying about Anand Sharma and Pranab Mukherjee. “How does (Commerce Minister) Sharma view India's current Foreign Direct Investment guidelines? Which sectors does he plan to open further? Why is he reluctant to open multi-brand...