-One World South Asia The recent report on paid news by Press Council of India recommends that representation of the People Act, 1951, should be amended to make the practice of paid news a punishable electoral malpractice. The Report defines paid news as Any news or analysis appearing in any media (Print & Electronic) for a price in cash or kind as consideration. The Report records that “Sections of the media in India...
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Into the mainstream
-The Indian Express Anna Hazare goes for broke again — after having ensured that Parliament was committed to taking his version of the Lokpal bill as a starting point, he now threatens another insurgency against the Congress-led government at the Centre if the bill does not become law by the end of the winter session. He and his team will campaign in the five states that head for elections next year,...
More »Arvind Kejriwal, RTI activist interviewed by Saba Naqvi
Arvind Kejriwal is part of the brains trust behind the Anna Hazare movement, which has the potential to further undermine the Delhi order. The engineer-turned-civil servant-turned-RTI activist is now a mass campaigner for the Jan Lokpal bill and plans to expand the movement. He spoke to Saba Naqvi about his ideological convictions, faith in “the people”, dealings with the Aruna Roy-led National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) and...
More »A Pail Of Piety Against An Augean Stable by Pranab Bardhan
There are structural aspects to a problem as complex as corruption. These cannot be tackled through punishment alone. Just as our society tends to latch on to holy men for miracle cures, in recent weeks, the urban middle classes have placed great hopes on an anti-corruption movement led by a pious man in a Gandhi cap. (The other claim on leadership by a holy man in red robes did not...
More »Clash of Interests by Prabhat Patnaik
Anna Hazare’s fast is over, but the conjuncture of which that fast was an episode is not: Hazare’s own movement, or other similar movements, are bound to recur in the coming months. The question naturally arises: what are these movements all about? And to start with: what was Hazare’s own movement all about? It was certainly not about “corruption” in any definable sense. That word meant different things to the...
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