Government, Civil Society to present separate Bills In the absence of any convergence of opinion on fundamental issues, government representatives and Civil Society members decided on Wednesday to conclude the deliberations and present their separate Bills on the structure and provisions of the Lokpal to the Union government. Emerging from the seventh meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee on the Lokpal Bill, the two sides admitted to fundamental differences on crucial...

This paper was presented at the Regional Workshop on War on Terror and Asian Democracy 17 May 2011, Kim Dae-Jung Convention Centre, South Korea organised by Solidarity for Democratization Movement in Asia (SDMA) Introduction In the discourse on terrorism and counter terrorism, September 11 stands as a watershed because of the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001. Government of India (GoI) also took full advantage of the ‘War on Terror’...

“Government can no longer convince people its hands are clean” A former Union Revenue Secretary, E.A.S. Sarma, has accused the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) of turning a “blind eye” to his repeated warnings about “alleged irregularities” committed in auditing capital costs and allowing price and other concessions to the Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) in the KG basin and Cairn India in Rajasthan. In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Manmohan...

-The Times of India   Social activist Anna Hazare has said that he may have to revive the agitation on corruption that he had started at Jantar Mantar. Hazare said he was disappointed with the government's approach on the Lokpal Bill and accused it of going back on the promises it had made. His comments came a day after strong differences emerged between the two camps in the meeting of the joint drafting panel. The...

There’s a bogey of news to show the complementary association of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev on the issue of corruption and black money. It seems as if both of them are fighting the same battle against the Congress-led regime and supplementing each other in their respective struggles. Both of them have emerged as the most visible faces of the contemporary Civil Society, pressurising the government to take crucial steps...