Over seven lakh calls to a phone number set up to register the number of supporters for an anti-corruption movement. Schoolchildren who have swapped their cricketing heroes for a 78-year-old Gandhian who is fasting unto death. Cries castigating Manmohan Singh's effeteness being greeted by a roar in the swelling crowds. And a mostly-out-of work Uma Bharti scouting for a photo-op but barely managing one. At Jantar Mantar, the site of Anna...

In two hundred cities across India on Tuesday, thousands of college students, young executives and housewives joined a campaign that asks the government to enact an important new law to fight corruption. At the centre of the movement is respected social activist Anna Hazare who has begun a hunger strike that he says will not end till the government proves its commitment to the Jan Lokpal Bill (Citizen's Ombudsman Bill). What...

Hazare is now fighting possibly the biggest battle of his life, by launching an indefinite hunger strike in New Delhi to press for an early enactment of a Lokpal Bill, legislation that would create public ombudsmen to investigate corruption charges against public servants Anna Hazare is a veteran of many battles—as a former soldier and then as a social activist who has forced at least half a dozen Maharashtra ministers to...

This article explores the issue of dalits’ inclusion in the media industry. It argues that under-representation of dalits in Indian media leads to an exclusion of news on dalits. [This was presented in the “National Conference on Ethical Issues and Indian Media” held on 26 and 27 November 2010 and in Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu.] [J Balasubramaniam (balumids@gmail.com) is with the Department of Journalism and Science Communication, Madurai Kamaraj University.] The basis...

Surrounded by lush green wheat and yellow flowering mustard fields at Ekdanta primary school, it is noon and the 57 children in two combined classes are fidgety - impatient for the school served midday meal. The hot meals are served by the Akshaya Patra Foundation, the largest non- profit in India, in partnership with the government’s school meal programme that covers 120 million children in 1.26 million schools across the country. A...