-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 hunger and malnutrition situation in the country has shown marginal improvement, according to the HUNGaMA report. ONE area that has always bothered policymakers in a growth-obsessed economy is the state of the social sector, in particular figures indicating the numbers of people going hungry or are homeless and children who are out of school, the poor nutritional status of women and children, and the high infant and maternal mortality rates....

What was our immediate response to further decline in the child sex ratio in India? Within days of the provisional 2011 Census results (March-April 2011), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reconstituted the Central Supervisory Board for the Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex selection) Act 1994 , which had not met for 3 years, and on November 30, 2011 the Ministry of Women and Child Development...

How our dismal education scene is linked to our intolerance What’s common to the Salman Rushdie episode, India’s dismal educational scenario—as underlined by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Pratham’s 7th Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER)—and its appalling ranking on the Global Hunger Index (GHI)? It’s clear even on the surface: a deep disconnect between India’s claims on democratic superpower status and its grim reality. If you probe...

The widespread outrage following the telecast of video footage of Jarawa men and women dancing for tourists is both heartening and disappointing. Heartening because the media made a rather unusual attempt to address the existential challenges of a people known to us as 'primitives' and disappointing because it failed to generate a nuanced debate. The 30-second TV slots accorded to 'experts' and stakeholders served to polarise opinion on the incident...