Activists also opposed to use of JCB machines Hundreds of protesting villagers march towards the Chief Minister’s residence The Gehlot government’s honeymoon with activist groups seems to be nearing its end with their growing frustration over the lackadaisical approach of authorities to the transparency clause in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Though among the best in the country in the implementation of the scheme, Rajasthan has seemingly gone back...

The independence of the judiciary and the rule of law will be severely compromised if the integrity of the higher judiciary is not protected by an independent, informed, transparent, fair and robust process.  The former Chief Justice of India, P.B. Gajendragadkar, said: “Wise judges never forget that the best way to sustain the dignity and status of their office is to deserve respect from the public at large by the...

We Indians implicitly believe in India’s great past. Recently, that past has been given a statistical underpinning by Angus Maddison. To celebrate the beginning of the 21st century, Maddison wrote a book called The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. There he says that India was the world’s largest economy in the first millennium AD. It produced one-third of the world’s income in the first century, and 29 per cent in...

The near total political paralysis of one of India's largest states, Andhra Pradesh, over its proposed carve-up, raises fresh questions about how the world's largest democracy will handle questions of identity and territory in this young century. Telangana, the new state proposed, is not a fresh demand, but even as it seems closer than ever to materialising, it opens a Pandora's box in a vast country of over a billion...

Demanding equal educational opportunities for all children, a large contingent of people walked to Bal Bhavan here this past Friday in support of three key demands on the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. December 11 was the day India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to demand the right to education for every Indian child. Regretting that millions of...