Civil society groups and organisations on Tuesday condemned attempts to malign co-chairman of the Lokpal Bill joint drafting committee Shanti Bhushan and its member Prashant Bhushan. Expressing “full solidarity,” the organisations said they would oppose all efforts to sideline the central issue of establishing a strong and effective mechanism to tackle endemic corruption in the country. Describing Mr. Shanti Bhushan as “a tireless defender of civil liberties and the rule of law,”...

In an effort to encourage individuals to help feed tens of thouSands of hungry children across the world, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has created a social media platform through which people can share their favourite meals by making donations to the agency. The Internet portal, WeFeedback, engages supporters through an online “Feedback Calculator” that helps them to work out how many children they could feed if they donated...

Itself the outcome of a bottom-up movement, the Jan Lokpal bill ironically proposes a centralised framework against graft. Without checks and balances. There was never any doubt that India needs a strong Lokpal Act. The protest has paved the way for its enactment. With the exultation over the anti-corruption campaign’s ‘victory’ quieting down, it’s time to take stock. Nuanced arguments—and indeed substance—have to recover lost ground to take the discourse...

Do we, the Indian middle class, see the corruption within us? I was too busy being corrupt to join Anna Hazare’s camp last week. For four days, I heard nothing but stories of our Tahrir Square-like revolution against the corrupt unfurling right under our noses in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. But it was school admission time and I had some serious palm-greasing, document-fudging, string-pulling, weight-throwing and tout-chasing to do. I had...

It is not often that a social security programme the size of Mahatma Gandhi NREGS - New Delhi has spent Rs 40,000 crore on it in 2010/11 alone - faces an existential moment. But, April 2011 will present one such crossroad: the end of the term of a bureaucrat widely acknowledged as the prime mover behind the five-year old scheme. Brought in six years ago to the Centre from her parent...