-The Hindu   Civil rights activist Aruna Roy on Sunday termed the notion of parliamentary privilege ‘fundamentally flawed' and said it needed a relook. “The privilege issue, we [the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI)] feel, is fundamentally flawed. We will have to examine it. Not only now, we have raised this over a number of issues [earlier],” she said at an interaction with the media. On Parliament's breach of privilege motion...

An FIR may be slapped on Team Anna for flouting some "essential" conditions of the undertaking during the last few days of the massive protest at Ramlila Maidan, sources in Delhi Police said on Friday. During several meetings this week, police officers contemplated action against the organizers for breaking four important conditions of the undertaking signed by them. According to sources, the team flouted the undertaking by using loudspeakers beyond 10pm,...

Ankaji Bhai Gangar, a 49-year-old subsistence farmer, stood in line in this remote village until, for the first time in his life, he squinted into the soft glow of a computer screen. His name, year of birth and address were recorded. A worker guided Mr. Gangar’s rough fingers to the glowing green surface of a scanner to record his fingerprints. He peered into an iris scanner shaped like binoculars that...

-The Business Standard   The poor progress made by states in stemming the declining sex ratio (of the number of girls in the 0-6 age group for every 1,000 boys) in the country has prompted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to write to the 28 state chief ministers on the issue. The recent census showed a decline in states which had earlier not reported one. This had prompted a high-level meeting in the Prime...

After his successful campaign for the Jan Lokpal Bill, Anna Hazare is now targeting electoral reform to curb corruption. While politicians were his main target, few realised that it was the bureaucrats who had enabled the politicians to abuse the system. The war on corruption needs drastic administrative reforms to curb the enormous power of the petty babus. The good intentions of prime ministers, the commitment of good officers and...