For a poor boy from the dark heart of tribal India, constable Kartam Surya has done well. An 8th class pass from the village of Misma in South Bastar’s Dantewada district — in the so-called Maoist 'liberated zone' in Chhattisgarh — 26-year-old Surya makes sure he gives his father, a marginal farmer scratching a living from the land, enough money to live in peace and comfort. "Surya is a good son...

In a system where half the litigants must necessarily lose their cases and where most complaints against judges are frivolous, the Bill, if implemented, would mark the beginning of the end of the judiciary. The last two decades have marked the extraordinary rise of India. This has however been tinged with cynicism about our major democratic institutions and a pessimism about their future. The judiciary, which till now has been looked...

The court presses home its power to intervene when 'little Indians lose their small property' to land acquisition by state governments Parliament has not been able to pass an updated land acquisition law for several years, though this is a burning issue and innocent blood has been shed in many states. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continues to deliver judgments in which disputes arose several decades ago. Two such decisions in recent...

Recent actions of some senior BJP leaders hint at an understanding between the Congress and the main opposition at the leadership level. THE Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) credentials and commitment as the principal opposition party of the country have been repeatedly questioned in the past seven years, the period in which the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has held the reins of power at the Centre. Recent developments in Parliament...

Why are the erstwhile RTI campaigners so alarmed five years after it became law? Why so many dharnas, rallies, conventions and hunger-strikes all over again? Part of the reason is that the silent revolution that the RTI has spawned needs to be defended from surreptitious alterations and manipulations, and partly because the RTI activists are being threatened, harassed and assaulted by the corrupt and the powerful, often with the connivance...