Why do poor people in rural areas vote when they know the whole system is against them? JEAN DRÈZE talks to some voters and observes the voting process during the recent Assembly elections in Latehar district, Jharkhand, and comes away with some pointers...  At one booth (Rankikalan, Booth No. 69) a BJP activist was trying to influence voters before they entered the booth, under the guise of helping them. Latehar...

Much like the tsunami waves that devastated many coastal areas five years ago, the closing weeks of 2009 saw an ill wind sweeping across many of our democratic institutions, highlighting that beneath the veneer of the nation’s aspirations towards great power status was a crumbling institutional core. To look at the fourth estate first. The preface to the Press Council of India’s “Norms of Journalistic Conduct” has a section that...

According to a report by Shirish Khare in NewsWing.com, a news portal dedicated to raising the issues of the voiceless in the Hindi belt, 25 children have died in just two villages of Meghnagar block in the month of October at the tribal dominated Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. The report (see text link below) cites under-nutrition as the likely reason for the tragedy. The alarming NewsWing.com report says that the...

The same exclusive report, with different bylines, in three rival dailies. Swathes of advertising dolled up as news stories. Is ‘paid news’ getting institutionalised? “Young dynamic leadership: Ashokrao Chavan,” read the headline of a prominent news item in the Marathi daily Lokmat (October 10). That was 72 hours before the people of Maharashtra went to vote in the State Assembly polls. The item was attributed to the newspaper’s "Special Correspondent,"...

The Assembly elections saw the culture of “coverage packages” explode across Maharashtra. In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for almost any coverage at all.  C. Ram Pandit can now resume his weekly column. Dr. Pandit (name changed) had long been writing for a well-known Indian language newspaper in Maharashtra. On the last day for the withdrawal of nominations to the recent State Assembly elections, he found himself...