In this winter of gloom, doom and corruption, the government can bask in some warmth from data collected by its statistical agencies. (Alas, these agencies have yet to hire some basic data-processing capabilities from minor computer firms, let alone agencies like Infosys. Perhaps Nandan Nilekani can loan some programmers from the UID project.) So what is the issue, and what is the evidence?It was only a few months ago that...

Since the last few years, Prashan Bhushan, senior lawyer, has fired up the Indian political scene through his missionary legal practice.In the legal fraternity he is a loner because he is, always, on the wrong side of the power set up in New Delhi. In fact, when one meets the slow and soft-speaker, he hardly looks like a lawyer who is capable of shaking-up the government and its cronies.But, his...

He challenged 'socialist' Mulayam Singh Yadav, charging him with possessing disproportionate assets, contested elections against BJP stalwart Rajnath Singh and is now responsible for all the furore over the foodgrain scam. Vishwanath Chaturvedi, whose PIL became the basis for high court's December 3 order in the scam, is a compulsive litigant. "I have filed some three dozen public interest litigations of diverse nature," he said here on Tuesday. Most of these...

The issues relating to the victims of endosulfan, sprayed in the plantations of Kasargod district in Kerala, have snowballed once again. “Earthworms emerged from the soil, and, subsequently, died. Then birds came to eat the earthworms and they died as well.”   “Some termites were killed in a cotton farm sprayed with endosulfan. A frog fed on the dead termites, and was immobilised a few minutes later. An owl which flew over...

Fifty thousand jobs? The U.S. economy has lost that many every week, on average, for a straight 140 weeks since December 2007. Now that the media's gush and drool over the Obama visit has run dry — thanks to other far more interesting events — it might be worth looking at a couple of ‘outcomes' that much of our media seemed pretty taken with.‘Twenty deals worth 10 billion dollars that create...