-The Indian Express   After a season of excess and excitability, the prime minister’s assertion of constitutional propriety was welcome. In recent months, public discourse has been roiled by a series of corruption scandals, and to add to that, some of the solutions suggested by civil society champions of the Lokpal bill have been rash and potentially destabilising. The PM spoke up for the Constitution, and the importance of preserving the inbuilt...

The Joint Lokpal Bill Drafting Committee concludes its meetings without any agreement on major issues. ON June 21, as the five government representatives and the five civil society members of the Joint Lokpal Bill Drafting Committee ended their deliberations after exchanging their versions of the draft Lokpal Bill, the battle lines were clearly drawn. The government was in no mood to agree with the civil society members led by Anna...

-Reuters   Clad in white home-spun garments and living in a spartan room of his village's Hindu temple, Anna Hazare is an unlikely thorn in the side of the government hundreds of miles away in New Delhi. And yet for millions of Indians, he is a 21st-century Mahatma Gandhi, inspiring a rare wave of protests against the spiralling corruption that has tarnished the up-and-coming image of Asia's third-largest economy. Like Gandhi, who led India's...

-PTI   Pressing its demand for a strong Lokpal with teeth to fight corruption, the CPI has warned that the government could face "trouble" if it comes up with a bogus draft in Parliament. The remarks came after a team of civil society activists led by Anna Hazare met leaders of the Communist Party of India (CPI) to put their points across on the issue of the Lokpal and seek support for...

-The Business Standard There are better ways to curb it than a Guest Control Order No one can deny that in a country like India, wasting food and ostentatious consumption at social gatherings are a social crime. A social movement espousing moderation in consumption habits would instantly strike a chord with a large number of Indians. Also, few would deny that India’s newly rich and upwardly mobile like to indulge in conspicuous...