India has slipped to 87th spot in Transparency International’s latest ranking of nations based on levels of corruption, with the global watchdog asserting that perceptions about corruption in the country increased in the wake of the Commonwealth games Against the backdrop of alleged irregularities in the recently held Commonwealth games (CWG), India’s perceived corruption levels have gone up, with a corresponding worsening of its world ranking. According to Transparency International’s Corruption...

Last week's column, “The plight of Dalits and the news media” (October 25, 2010), has generated a lively and interesting response from several readers. The column was about the prioritisation of the tasks before the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes (NCSC) by its new Chairman, P.L. Punia (not P.J. Punia as erroneously mentioned in the column.) The concern of most who wrote was over the failure of successive governments...

They narrate their accounts of pain and humiliation “We will never again go back to that life of shame and indignity” Provide quota for community in higher education: Aruna Roy The capital's Constitution Club resounded on Monday to cries of “Jai Bhim” as a huge gathering of former manual scavengers rose as one to demand an apology from the government for the wrongs done to the community. “Apologise now for the violation of...

The case of the Food Security Bill gets curiouser and curiouser.  What started off as a fight between universalization and targeting has ended (or so it would seem) in a complete victory in the National Advisory Council, Government of India (NAC) for targeting through universalization (if such a thing was possible), with the honourable exception of Prof Jean Dreze, who has to be commended for his ‘note of disagreement’. On...

It is imperative that the committee constituted to look into charges of corruption in the Commonwealth games should also include violations of labour laws within its purview. One of the more blatant and visible scams of the recently concluded Commonwealth games relates to how the thousands of workers who worked on the games construction sites were denied minimum wages, safety equipment, housing and other benefits constitutionally due to them. In an interview...