The curiosum of a ‘red regime’ with a knack to get re-elected term after term for over more than three decades within the ambit of a full-fledged multi-party democracy has finally disappeared. The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has not merely lost the poll in West Bengal, it has been made mincemeat of. Its vote share has come down from close to 50 per cent...

The Jan Lokpal is being vested with sweeping powers, which are susceptible to misuse. The centralised structure of the Lokpal will be ill-suited for sorting out governance deficit. People will be confined to being complainants and applicants. There is need to make the Jan Lokpal people-centric FOR many who quite rightly guessed that the Lokpal Bill drafted by the government would be a non-starter, the alternative merited automatic support. However, little...

-The Deccan Chronicle   India’s department of information technology that functions under the articulate and vociferous minister Kapil Sibal, has quietly pushed through an Act to censor online content. The recently drafted rules that give private arbiters a right to take down objectionable content, free speech advocates say will seriously hamper virtual communications, debate and discussions. In the past in a country, that is the largest democracy, the lawmakers have suggested bans on books,...

Attempts by the Indian government to combat poverty are not working, according to the World Bank. The governing coalition spends billions of dollars - more than 2% of its gross domestic product - on helping the poor. But a new World Bank report says aid programmes are beset by corruption, bad administration and under-payments. As an example, the report cites grain: only 40% of grain handed out for the poor reaches its intended...

India spends more on programs for the poor than most developing countries, but it has failed to eradicate poverty because of widespread corruption and faulty government administration, the World Bank said Wednesday. “India is not getting the ‘bang for the rupee’ that its significant expenditure would seem to warrant, and the needs of important population groups remain only party addressed,” John D. Blomquist, lead economist at the World Bank, wrote in...