-The Times of India blog Authoritarian leadership, big corruption, and endless freebies for the masses. These were the hallmarks of Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa (popularly called Amma) who died last week. In this week of mourning, she has been praised by even her bitter political foes. Yet this political correctness must not distort her electoral record. Since the 1970s, power in Tamil Nadu has oscillated between the DMK and Amma’s AIADMK....

-Livemint.com Pro-poor and yet not populist can be the single defining strand of this year’s Union budget The run-up to this year’s Union budget, especially the past one week, has taken place in the backdrop of an unprecedented, vicious political confrontation between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition. Together with the hit-wicket tendencies of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), it probably exaggerated the magnitude of every challenge...

-Economic and Political Weekly Farmers' unions and political parties have been demanding the implementation of the Swaminathan minimum support price (cost plus 50%) to address agrarian crisis and farmers' distress. But they have not raised demands for the implementation of the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers, which have the potential to provide lasting solutions. Ranjit Singh Ghuman (ghumanrs@yahoo.co.uk) is a Nehru SAIL Chair Professor, Centre for Research in Rural and...

-The Hindu Corruption in India has undergone a qualitative shift from the days of licence Raj to the era of liberalisation. Opportunities for making money have come in handy for politicians, who were also dealing with a new political situation of fragmentation and instability. In the days leading to the 2008 Assembly election in Karnataka, slum-dwellers in Bangalore were startled to see small bundles flying in through their windows at night. The...

-The Hindustan Times     An analysis of candidates fielded by Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for 2014 Lok Sabha elections shows that they continue to give tickets to candidates with serious criminal cases, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) have found. ADR and NEW analysed the background details of 188 out of 301 candidates announced by these major parties till March 8, 2014 who have declared serious...