-The Economic Times Pan Singh Tomar, the legendary steeplechase athlete-turned-dacoit, earned an annual salary of 120 or thereabouts from the Indian Army, where he served as a hawildar in the 1950s. These days, his great grandson roams around their ancestral village dispensing similar amounts to those at the bottom of the Indian pyramid. If Tomar Sr had resorted to guns for the latter part of his life, Anuj Singh Tomar too has...

-The Indian Express The International Monetary Fund’s recent downgrading of the growth forecast for India from 6.2 per cent to 4.9 per cent for 2012, which came on the heels of the decline in the actual growth rate to below 5.5 per cent in the first half of 2012, has brought reforms back to the centrestage of the policy discourse. Which reforms are needed and why? India’s growth trajectory has been unique....

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court’s unyielding criticism of the government for not eradicating the practice of manual scavenging was the springboard for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to introduce the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012 in the Lok Sabha on September 3. Welcomed as a panacea for the historically iniquitous, caste-ordained practice of manually handling human waste, the new Bill indicates renewed commitment...

-The Hindu There is at last some clarity on the politics of the anti-corruption movements. Baba Ramdev’s dramatic call for Congress- hatao and the ‘political turn’ of the Anna movement have confirmed that a movement aimed at rooting out corruption cannot defer a direct encounter with party politics for very long. The manner in which both decisions were announced left something to be desired. The announcement by ‘Team Anna’ invited serious...