-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Lifting the cloak of secrecy from sources of funding of political parties and their expenditure the central information commission (CIC) has ruled that they are public authorities who now need to respond to RTI queries within six weeks. Political parties on Monday lost the battle to stay out of RTI purview and keep their donors secret after the commission in a 54-page order said six national...

-Outlook The Maoists want a military conflict as it brings more adivasis into their fold. The Indian state's best bet is in ensuring that it wins over the aam adivasis to its side.   May 25th's condemnable attack by the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army, which ended up killing and injuring over 50 people from Congress politicians to migrant adivasi labourers, cannot be understood without recognising the Maoist party's explicit political aims. These...

-Frontline Corruption tends to be greater in periods when there is a state-engineered redistribution of wealth in favour of a few at the explicit or implicit expense of the many. Liberalisation is one such period. IT cannot be verified and may not be true. But, the view that the record of graft and corruption during the two-term, nine-year rule of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is the worst in India's post-Independence...

-The Hindu   Top civil society bodies are challenging the government's ‘counter-affidavit' in the Paid News case which seeks to gut the Election Commission's powers In a major twist to the Ashok Chavan vs. Madhav Kinhalkar legal battle (more notorious as the "Paid News" scandal), leading civil society organisations and eminent individuals have approached the Supreme Court to implead themselves into the case. Their intervention application, moved by advocate Prashant Bhushan, minces no words...

-IANS India also gets high scores for electoral process and pluralism (9.58) and civil liberties (9.41) Washington: Even as it acknowledges India as the world's most populous democracy, the Economist magazine's Index of Democracy 2012 ranks India 38th among 165 nations with an overall score of 7.52. India also gets high scores for electoral process and pluralism (9.58) and civil liberties (9.41). The top three positions go to Norway (9.93) Sweden (9.73) and...