The Lokpal Bill is in danger of skidding off the rails. As it is introduced in Parliament, eminent activist Aruna Roy tells Shoma Chaudhury why we should not rush into it. THE LOKPAL BILL is now being debated in Parliament, almost 40 years after the idea was first mooted. Unfortunately, parented on one side by decades of wilful government inertia and, on the other, by the panicked hustle of ‘Team...

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...

-The Business Standard   The Supreme Court decision banning both mining and movement of ore in Bellary district in Karnataka, following the Lok Ayukta report, is excessive. The blanket ban penalises even those who did nothing wrong. While the outrage over the illegal profiteering of over Rs 12,000 crore by a politician-operator-bureaucrat combine is understandable, applying the brakes on all mining and related activity in the district is an undifferentiated response. The...

-The Telegraph   Smaller parties today accused the government and the Opposition BJP of striking a face-saver deal on price rise, overshadowing the debate on the crucial issue in the Lok Sabha. Led by the Left, parties like the BSP and the RJD lashed out at the alleged pact the government was said to have struck with the BJP for drafting the language of the motion in such a way that the...

In scrapping the Uniform System of School Education (USSE) soon after coming to power, lakhs of students have been taken for a ride by the AIADMK government in Tamil Nadu on flimsy grounds, argued senior counsel M.N. Krishnamani in the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Making his submissions before a three-judge Bench comprising Justice J.M. Panchal, Justice Deepak Verma and Justice B.S. Chauhan, the senior counsel said the Cabinet decision on May...