-The Indian Express His vision for fighting corruption was a law that threatened to subvert every institution. Now Anna Hazare has couched his Republic Day appeal for yet another law in a woolly-headed — in fact, bizarre — rendition of Gandhianism. The urge for direct democracy that ran through his appeal for supreme power for gram sabhas is one that’s being increasingly iterated in various mobilisations for democratic reform. To this...

The government appears to be working towards an amicable solution on the question of who can collect biometric information data for the Indian population. There has been disagreement about whether this will be done by the UIDAI headed by Nandan Nilekani, or the National Population Register headed by Home Minister P. Chidambaram. It now seems that both may continue to collect data but share its use. When any country sets about...

Questionable drug trials on mentally challenged persons by doctors in Indore emphasise the need for strict enforcement of medical ethics. IN what appears to be a page out of Robin Cook's medical thriller, government and private doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, reportedly carried out clinical trials of various medicines on some 233 patients who had gone to them seeking psychiatric treatment. As in Cook's famous book Coma, in which a medical...

The Jaipur Literary Festival, a giddily chaotic celebration of the written word set on the grounds of a Rajasthan palace, ended in misery and embarrassment today, with the organizers bowing to pressure from local security forces and scotching plans for Salman Rushdie to “appear” at the festival, finally, by video link. Rushdie had already been forced to cancel plans to come to Jaipur after he had received intelligence reports—bogus intelligence,...

-BBC   Indian media have criticised the government for failing to ensure the security of author Salman Rushdie after threats of violence prevented him from addressing an Indian literary festival. Rushdie cancelled a video-link call to the festival after Muslim groups threatened to disrupt proceedings. The author blamed politicians for failing to oppose the groups for "narrow political reasons". Many Muslims regard his book, The Satanic Verses, as blasphemous. It was banned in India in 1988...