As a humble cog in the vast and wondrous machine of the Indian media, I want to extend my personal thanks to Justice Markandey Katju for his recent comments. He has been berated by the Editors Guild for his ‘tendentious and offensive’ remarks, but my own view is that we owe the new Chairman of the Press Council a small debt of gratitude. It is true that in his interview...

-The Economist   A maverick minister lays into a hallowed programme IT LOOKS like risky Politics for Jairam Ramesh, who runs India’s biggest civilian ministry, in charge of rural development, to lash out at his own government’s flagship welfare scheme. Mr Ramesh, who got his cabinet post in July, has sparked a row in the past week over corruption and poor results within a public programme that guarantees 100 days of paid work...

Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai in his address to recruits at the National Police Academy sought to enlist them in his campaign. BAGEHOT'S classic explains why and how a genre of civil servants mushroomed in India latterly as executive power, authority and prestige declined. None of them had earlier revealed a particularly strong spine. T.N. Seshan bared his traits once he was appointed Chief Election Commissioner (CEC). Others need not...

Mirchpur Dalit naib tehsildar can't be prosecuted due to his caste Drawing upon a couple of instances in the Mirchpur caste violence trial in which the Judge was constrained by two sub-sections of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, to sentence three convicted Jat men to life imprisonment offering no judicial discretion for a lighter sentence, and the neglect of duties by a Dalit naib tehsildar of Mirchpur...

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday dubbed as completely bogus Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's charge that his letter seeking her concurrence for a CBI probe into alleged embezzlement of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) funds was politically motivated. Reacting to Ms. Mayawati's letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Mr. Ramesh denied her charge of taking up with her the fraud committed in seven districts — siphoning...