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...

In the season of draft Bills, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has come out with its draft of the National Food Security Act, 2011, that gives legal backing to the highly leaky PDS system, thereby excluding innovative options like cash transfers, which may have included variants like food stamps and UID-linked smart cards. Despite the PM’s panel objecting to universal legal entitlement, the draft says that “not less than 90%...

The agriculture ministry has decided to drastically reduce the number of central schemes after it found that most of its schemes, barring a few like the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna (RKVY), have become redundant. The farm ministry thinks only 10 of the 51 existing schemes should be sufficient to take care of the sector. The total outlay for agriculture schemes is 15,034 crore. "It is true that many of our 51 schemes...

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who scrapped the MLA Local Area Development Fund (MLALAD), has now asked the Centre to make alternative arrangements to implement projects for its parliamentary variant — the MPLAD — in the state. Kumar says the reasons are technical. The MLALAD has been replaced by the Chief Minister’s Local Area Development Scheme, under which a body of engineers will be in charge of executing development works....

In India, the fight against corruption easily becomes an alibi to undermine democratic processes and institutions. In the spurt of enthusiasm for Anna Hazare’s fast and the subsequent surrender to it by the government, what has been overlooked is the need for someone/thing like the Lok Pal to fight corruption. The simple point is that there exist within the Constitution enough processes and institutions to safeguard against corruption. The Indian...