Frankly, whatever be your opinion on the Jan Lokpal Bill and on the radical tactics used by Anna Hazare, the sheer popular support for the agitation against the government's attempt to introduce a diluted anti-corruption law is astounding. That by itself has left cynical smarty-pants like myself, never mind arrogant dumby-pants in the ruling party, dumbstruck. The power of the mob - an abbreviation of the Latin 'mobile vulgus' or 'excitable...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Centre okays reforms in rural job programme by Chetan Chauhan
People’s body gram panchayat will be the new administrator for implementing the world's biggest social security programme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, instead of government officials. In a new avatar, the government has approved new guarantees under MGNREGA including registration for job through a call centres, mandatory payment of wages within 15 days at the doorstep and providing dedicated staff at gram panchayat to implement and monitor the scheme. The...
More »CBI to probe RTI activist’s death by Milind Ghatwai
The Madhya Pradesh government on Thursday agreed for a CBI inquiry into the death of RTI activist Shehla Masood. She was found dead in her car on Tuesday. CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan asked the Home department to begin the process after Shehla’s family called on the DGP seeking a probe by a Central agency. The family said they did not trust the local police. The FSL and post mortem reports had said...
More »Hazare is no Gandhi by Salil Tripathi
Until about a year ago, the number of Indians who knew the name of Kisan Baburao Hazare, popularly known as Anna Hazare, ran into a few thousand -- small change in a country of a billion people. The former army driver was known for his peculiar experiments of social reform in a village in Maharashtra, in western India. He had received national awards for his social work. By the end of...
More »The blind spots of India Shining by Vinay Sitapati
This “activist” was quite different from the suit-wearing PIL litigant or the Left-leaning jholawala. In the run up to Anna Hazare’s first fast over an anti-corruption law in April, a communications company provided the technical support to a service in which, if mobile users called a toll-free number, they would then receive free alerts on the protests. The service was one of an array of technologies — from Twitter updates...
More »