Anna Hazare’s fast is over, but the conjuncture of which that fast was an episode is not: Hazare’s own movement, or other similar movements, are bound to recur in the coming months. The question naturally arises: what are these movements all about? And to start with: what was Hazare’s own movement all about? It was certainly not about “corruption” in any definable sense. That word meant different things to the...

Interview with social activist and Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal. THE organisational abilities of Arvind Kejriwal exhibited during the recent Jan Lokpal Bill movement earned him the sobriquet “Field Marshal of a peaceful agitation”. The social activist and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner played a significant role in conceiving the slogans, the symbolism and the trajectory of the movement. He is credited with anticipating some of the moves of the government...

-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...

Anna Hazare and his followers have a skewed notion of corruption. Would they ever see the Bhopal gas tragedy as the symptom of the problem? The government’s initial contempt and arrogance for Anna Hazare’s protest turned into craven pandering as his hordes made a carnival of it in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan. One was troubled by the fate of other protesters who have received short shrift—the small, the struggling and much suffering...

The Centre’s proposed land acquisition law will include a provision to create a land bank, one of the key demands made by Mamata Banerjee. Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh will meet the Bengal chief minister in Calcutta tomorrow and inform her about the provisions of the redrafted bill, which the Union cabinet is to take up on Monday. Mamata has been advocating the creation of a land bank that would specify areas...