-The Telegraph   Sonia Gandhi today sent a terse reply to Anna Hazare’s complaints about a “conspiracy” to defame him, the response setting the tone before a last-ditch bid to resolve differences on the Lokpal bill. The Congress chief’s reply to a letter from the Gandhian came a day ahead of a scheduled meeting of the joint committee of government representatives and social activists set up to draft the proposed anti-corruption law. Sonia’s...

A Tamil economist, the late S. Guhan, used to say that Delhi was a capital in search of a country. I was reminded of that remark during the fortnight of May 29 to June 11, 2011. In that fortnight, if one watched the ‘national’ channels or read the ‘national’ newspapers, one would think all of India was involved in one way or the other with the ideas and practices of...

After questions were raised recently on the ''leakages'' in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), another concern – non-payment of salaries to social auditors in Karnataka –might well have broad implications for the programme in the State. For the past six months, the social auditors who are responsible for supervising, guiding, rectifying errors in the programme’s implementation, and motivating people to take up more and jobs under the...

The ends may justify the means, but let's be clear - in rural India, extremes of coercion are being used to encourage toilet use Robert Chambers recently wrote that community-led total sanitation is leading to a development revolution, especially in south Asia. I agree with his assessment of sanitation's importance. In practice, however, the success of community-led efforts often hinges on the use of outright coercion. In my experience, the measures...

Right to education (RTE) in Karnataka is likely to remain circumscribed even after July 5, the day fixed by the state government to implement the RTE Act. The implementation is certain to run into a plethora of problems as the state is waiting for a response from the Centre on sharing the financial burden of enforcing the law. Primary and secondary education minister Vishveshwar Hegde Kageri said, “We have brought the...