-The Hindu   As the public support for Anna Hazare's fast swells by the day, the United Progressive Alliance government's reaction is a bewildering mix of dithering, denial, moral confusion, and fear. On the face of it, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that there was a “lot of scope for give-and-take,” and the opening of backroom channels to talk to Mr. Hazare, may suggest flexibility and conciliation. But if the back-of-the-mind calculation...

Our country is poised at a dangerous place right now for many reasons. There are all kinds of battles for supremacy. There are real resistances, there are theatrical and false resistances, revolutions from the top, revolutions from the bottom. And sometimes all of this is interpreted by an increasingly hysterical media which doesn't allow space for reflection, for thought, that will only bombard, control the public imagination.   At times like this,...

-Express News Service   Maintaining that “the right to dissent” must always be accompanied by the “obligation to listen”, activist Aruna Roy has asked the Anna Hazare-led group to recognise and respect difference of opinions, whether within the civil society groups themselves, or with any other formations. In an interview to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta for NDTV 24x7’s Walk the Talk programme, Roy, who is a member of the Sonia Gandhi-led...

While his means maybe Gandhian, his demands are certainly not. If what we're watching on TV is indeed a revolution, then it has to be one of the more embarrassing and unintelligible ones of recent times. For now, whatever questions you may have about the jan lokpal bill, here are the answers you're likely to get: tick the box — (a) Vande Mataram (b) Bharat Mata ki Jai (c) India is...

-First Post   Rent-seekers playing the politics of tokenism are targeting the movement against corruption led by Anna Hazare. An array of political forces – from leaders of the Muslim community to Dalit leaders to jholawallas – is stepping out to criticise the atmospherics of Anna’s movement as well the jan lokpal bill that Team Anna is campaigning for. On Monday, the Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, criticised Team Anna’s campaign,...