For a government that has been busy granting the people of India rights to employment, education and food, the United Progress Alliance has been lackadaisical in protecting the citizens’ right to privacy. Industrialist Ratan Tata was, therefore, right to seek the protection of the Supreme Court in the matter relating to leaked tapes of telephone tapping undertaken by the Union government’s tax authorities. After finishing its internal investigations, the government...

Advocates of liberalisation argue that by reducing state intervention and increasing transparency economic reform reduces corruption. Recent allegations of corruption suggest that this may not be true. In a season for scandal, allegations of large scale corruption have captured political India's attention. The instances to which such allegations relate are many, varying from the sale of 2G spectrum and the mobilisation and/or disposal of land and mining resources to purchases made...

Former telecom minister Arun Shourie on Sunday stirred a controversy by claiming in a TV interview that he was replaced by senior party leader Venkaiah Naidu in Parliament as the BJP's lead speaker in a debate on the 2009 Budget so that the party could take a more accommodating line on proposals that could favour industrialist Mukesh Ambani. Referring to tapes of a purported conversation between lobbyist Niira Radia and JD(U)...

When the revenue departments sleep over cases they had lost in the courts and do not appeal for long, it is difficult to tell whether it is just red tape or something else. Their lethargy causes losses to the government and gains to tax dodgers. The new chief justice of India (CJI) started his stint in the Supreme Court a few months ago with a strict code for the indolent babus....

The amount of rural reportage in the Indian media remains far too low, with even important stories such as those on farmer suicides tending to be ignored. One of the outspoken critics of this trend has been P Sainath, rural-affairs editor of The Hindu  and 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts. He was also the journalist who originally broke the story on...