The Supreme Court has rejected a five-decade-old perception built on the basis of several reports of Commissions of Inquiry that during communal violence the police were generally biased against minority community and arrested the victims instead of the assailants. "No one can perhaps dispute that in certain cases such aberrations may have taken place. But, we do not think that such instances are enough to denounce or condemn the entire force,...

A survey in nine States shows that they have quietly revived and expanded their public distribution system. AT a time when the Union Cabinet cleared the draft of the national food security Bill after dilly-Dallying over it comes a compelling piece of information: many State governments have quietly revived and expanded the public distribution system in their States. That, at any rate, is one of the main findings of a...

In Chhattisgarh, people swear by the PDS, which has witnessed a revival since 2004 when the government revamped it. IN Chhattisgarh, as part of the survey on public distribution system (PDS) versus cash transfers, a team of student volunteers visited 12 villages spread across Mahasamund and Sarguja districts. The State may have been in the news for all the wrong reasons in recent times, but the way its PDS worked...

-The Times of India In a follow-up action to the scathing CAG report on the sub-standard foodstuff and rations being provided to soldiers, the parliamentary public accounts committee (PAC) is said to have blasted the defence establishment and the Army for "deep-rooted and widespread malpractices". The PAC report, expected to be tabled in Parliament soon, conducted a detailed examination of last year's CAG report that punched several gaping holes in Army's entire...

-The Hindu   The government's decision on a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for minorities within the overall 27 per cent reservation for the backward classes promises to be the new trigger for a heated political discourse just ahead of several Assembly elections, including the all-important poll in Uttar Pradesh just a few months away. More than a decade ago, the V.P. Singh government ushered in the ‘ManDal revolution' in North India. It...