-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A database of one lakh offshore entities in tax havens owned by, among others, 498 Indians with addresses in upscale enclaves in major cities, generated a huge buzz on Saturday with agencies expected to try and decipher the disclosures. The last tranche of disclosures came out in April, among them were names of industrialists Vijay Mallya and Ravikant Ruia and Congress MP Vivekanand Gaddam, although nothing...

-The Telegraph Right to Information activists have accused political parties of making a mountain out of a molehill in their opposition to the Central Information Commission order bringing six parties under the RTI Act's ambit. They say the act has enough provisions to block queries on sensitive subjects such as campaign strategy or political discussions at meetings. "We moved the plea (before the CIC) to bring political parties under the RTI Act mainly...

-The Hindu   Neha Khator narrates the story of an NGO that transformed a backward village into a bustling city, with funds, of course, but also by fostering a sense of duty in its residents. Vimla Kanwar, a 70-year-old widow, had a problem. After her husband, a handloom yarn spinner, died of cancer, the officials at the Khadi Gram Udyog took away his charkha. Concerned about finding a means of survival at her...

-The Hindu   The parliamentary committees on the howitzer scam and the stock market scandal protected the powerful and failed to fix accountability. The same is true in the spectrum case The current political situation brings back memories of 1989. The Prime Minister then was under a cloud in the Bofors scam. Many of his close associates like Lalit Suri and Ajitabh Bachchan were accused of wrong-doing. Today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and...

-Countercurrents.org   The events of last over two decades have shown us, more than before that the efforts of dividing the nation by communal forces have been a major obstacle to social peace and process of development. In India while the communal violence began with the Jabalpur riot of 1961, it is from last couple of decades especially from 1980s that the divisive politics has tried to drive a wedge between different...