Anna Hazare on Tuesday said PM Manmohan Singh has kept mum on the issue of including the PM in the Lokpal ambit because "there is a remote control on him". Speaking to reporters, Hazare said, "Personally, I don't think Manmohan Singh is scared to come in the Lokpal ambit. But then, there is a remote control on him. I recently wrote a letter to him asking him why he did not...
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Civil society's comments outrageous: Left parties
-The Hindu The Left parties on Thursday took on the Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev-led civil society representatives for their comments that sought to undermine parliamentary democracy. “Absolutely outrageous comments by some of the civil society leaders are being heard.... questioning the right of the MLAs and MPs to represent the vast millions of Indians. This is nothing else but showing contempt for our parliamentary democracy and also seeking to undermine...
More »The discreet charm of civil society by P Sainath
There is nothing wrong in having advisory groups. But there is a problem when groups not constituted legally cross the line of demands, advice and rights-based, democratic agitation. The 1990s saw marketing whiz kids at the largest English daily in the world steal a term then in vogue among sexually discriminated minorities: PLUs — or People Like Us. Media content would henceforth be for People Like Us. This served advertisers' needs...
More »Mamata Banerjee re-acquires some land leased out to Tatas in Singur
-The Economic Times The West Bengal government on Thursday promulgated an Ordinance to re-acquire 400 acres of the 997-acre Singur property that was leased out to the Tatas in March 2007 for the Nano project . The ordinance has been signed by governor MK Narayanan. The ordinance presumably kills two birds with a stone. It will enable chief minister Mamata Banerjee to keep a nearly three-year-old promise she had made to Singur's...
More »Politics in the Digital Age by CP Chandrasekhar
It was indeed an unusual ''social movement''. A group of ''activists'' who had banded together to draft one version of a bill that would establish a statutory institution to investigate corruption in the political establishment sits in protest demanding the acceptance and passage of its version of the bill. The protest has elements of a social drama inasmuch as it fronts an elderly leader, Anna Hazare, with Gandhian credentials, a...
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