-PTI Survey said 27% of respondents had paid a bribe, the most direct experience of corruption for a person, with police the most often bribed institution One in four people paid a bribe in dealing with public services and institutions in the past year, according to a global corruption survey. In the world's largest assessment of public opinion on the subject, Transparency International found that political parties are considered the most corrupt institutions,...

-The Hindustan Times A couple of months ago, I was in South Block for a meeting at the ministry of defence. Security norms dictate leaving mobile and electronic devices at the checkpoint. Imagine my horror when I came back an hour later to see one of the guards going through my iPad. This cavalier attitude towards individual privacy is illustrative of an interesting dilemma between the inevitability of a more intrusive...

-The Times of India The Parliament's monsoon session is only about a month away. That the Union cabinet has yet taken the ordinance route to implement the national food security Bill signals the scam-tainted UPA government's desperation to woo voters before the next general elections. But the hope that expanding what is already one of the world's largest food security programmes will boost political fortunes is hallucinatory. The exchequer is already...

-The Hindu That predators continue to enjoy impunity for crimes committed against women is now common knowledge. But less known is the fact that the worst perpetrators are often those most intimately known to women, or that the latter are vulnerable in consequence to life-long health-related risks. These frightening revelations are contained in a recent World Health Organisation report, issued in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government has decided to put a blanket ban on several websites that allow users to share pornographic content. In an order dated June 13, department of telecom (DoT) has directed internet service providers (ISPs) to block 39 websites. Most of them are web forums, where internet users share images and URLs to download pornographic files. But some of these websites are also image hosts and...