Nandkumar Naitam is relieved after a month of “torturous” anxiety. “I thought it over again and again,” the 20-year-old tribal youth says. “I thought that if I couldn’t get a rifle, I’d pick up my traditional weapon, the bow-and-arrow.” It was a desperation that Nandu, as he is fondly called, shared with his 5,000-odd fellow special police officers (SPOs), who till a month ago formed the Chhattisgarh government’s frontline against the Maoists...

The Lokpal Bill is in danger of skidding off the rails. As it is introduced in Parliament, eminent activist Aruna Roy tells Shoma Chaudhury why we should not rush into it. THE LOKPAL BILL is now being debated in Parliament, almost 40 years after the idea was first mooted. Unfortunately, parented on one side by decades of wilful government inertia and, on the other, by the panicked hustle of ‘Team...

The past couple of months have seen a renewed attack on the National Advisory Council (NAC). The NAC has been decried as an unconstitutional, undemocratic, “super-cabinet” where unaccountable “jholawalas” hatch harebrained schemes guaranteed to run the government aground. Another line of criticism has focused on the process of the formation of the NAC, its space within the Indian Constitution, and its capacity to influence policy. The two criticisms merge with...

Mamata Banerjee has reintroduced an administrative structure to bring land and land reforms officials under the district administration’s “direct supervision” in a move aimed at injecting accountability and reining in staff close to the Left that had scrapped the system. The Jyoti Basu government had abolished the British-era structure in 1989, bringing in decentralisation but allowing Alimuddin Street to pack the department with chosen officials who would bypass the district administration...

Days after it was made public, the new land acquisition bill is facing resistance. While farmer’s unions and civil society groups want more — permanent rights over land,  even in case of a take over, prior consent of people even for public projects, state agencies and developers are unhappy over the restrictive nature of the bill. "As farmers, we would not like to part with our land but if required in larger...