What began as a few whispers is now a booming drumbeat. Powerful senior ministers are asserting that the Right to Information Act (RTI), till now flaunted as one of the UPA government’s biggest gifts to the aam aadmi, is “transgressing into government functioning”. Similar misgivings are being voiced on another constitutional body that has been in the news lately—the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). Put together, this has...
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Show The Right Cheek by Saba Naqvi
Why did they attack Team Anna man Prashant Bhushan? In the twisted mind of Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, it was some sort of glorious act. “God give us the power to complete our mission,” he tweeted before it. The mission: a coward’s attack on eminent lawyer and human rights activist Prashant Bhushan by Bagga and two of his friends, Inder Verma and Vishnu Gupta. On October 13, the three men...
More »Biman Bose's poser to Mamata on deadline
-The Hindu West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee should clarify whether her earlier utterances that there were no Maoists in the State were “correct or wrong,” said Biman Bose, chairman of the State's Left Front Committee here on Sunday, a day after she set a seven-day deadline for the extremists in the Jangalmahal region on her offer of talks on condition that they give up their arms. “They [the Trinamool Congress] had...
More »Anti-nuclear protests in Tamil Nadu gather strength by Vidya Padmanabhan
L. Devasagayam moved into the tsunami resettlement quarters in the village of Idinthakarai on the coast in the far south of Tamil Nadu after his neighbourhood further south was destroyed in the 2004 calamity. But now, he worries that the colourful home that he gratefully accepted after that disaster could be his undoing. The reason for the fear confronts him when he steps out of his house. Clearly visible at a...
More »The Inconvenient Truth Of Soni Sori by Shoma Chaudhury
Why were two tribals and the Essar group framed by the Chhattisgarh police? Why are Soni Sori and Linga Kodopi being systematically silenced? This chilling story of one family reveals more about India's Naxal crisis than any official document can. AS I sit to write this, at 12.20 pm on 4 October 2011, an SMS pops up on my phone: “Soni Sori has been arrested by the Delhi Crime Branch.” The...
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