-The Hindu Kochi: Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who recently received an award from the United Nations on behalf of the Chief Minister's office, was actually nominated for the award by his own government. The rules of nomination for the United Nations Public Service Award clearly state that self-nominations - "when the institution being nominated and the institution making the nomination are the same" - are not accepted. But the Chief Minister's staff...

-The Hindustan Times Political parties have come together to shut the door on sharing information with citizens and the government, buoyed by the near-consensus among the political class, is planning changes to the Right to Information Act. It may take the amendment route or even promulgate an ordinance to keep political parties out of the ambit of the information act. The amendments to the act will overturn the June 3 order of the...

-PTI Bankura: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday asked why the UPA government was in a hurry to legislate the Food Security Bill when its continuance was in doubt, while denying that Trinamool Congress was opposed to it. "Congress is saying that they are going to pass the National Food Security Bill and the Trinamool Congress is obstructing it," Ms. Banerjee told a panchayat election meeting here in Bankura district. "You...

-Outlook As the Manmohan Singh government makes evident its unfriendliness to villages, the nation hurtles towards disaster. It's a danger no one wants to face. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been trying for years to make us believe that agriculture is a vast marshland in which a huge population is stuck ankle- to neck-deep and it is his duty to rescue them. "Our salvation lies in moving people out of agriculture," he...

-The Hindustan Times The audacious ambush and bloody massacre of more than two dozen political leaders and their security guards in Darbha valley of Sukma district in south Chhattisgarh, raises again profoundly important questions about the legitimacy of violence as an instrument to battle injustice and oppression. Resistance to injustice is widely endorsed as the highest human duty in most cultures, but the debate is about the legitimacy of deploying violence in...