This Education Day (November 11), the principal of each elementary school in India will receive VVIP mail -- a letter from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Contained therein will be a highly personalised message of the PM for the children of the country, who have long been guaranteed the Right to Education (RTE) by law, but who may not still know of it. The letter, to be posted to 13 lakh principals of...

-The Times of India   Team Anna on Tuesday attacked political parties on the issue of corruption. It said that it is campaigning against Congress because it is in power and in a position to bring a strong Jan Lokpal, which will curb corruption across the country. Addressing a public meeting, team Anna members Arvind Kejriwal, said, "Uttar Pradesh has been facing the brunt of corruption for last several decades. The face of...

AS THE UPA government struggled to hide its embarrassment over the finance ministry note on the 2G spectrum allocation, the RTI Act — through which the note was made public — has become the whipping boy. Senior Cabinet members such as Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily and Law Minister Salman Khurshid have hit out at the ‘misuse’ of the transparency law. Moily called for a national debate as he claimed RTI...

IT IS one of the inspirational legends of Indian journalism that James Hickey, founder and editor of the Bengal Gazette — this country’s first newspaper, with its first edition going back to January 1780 — was a fearless seeker of the truth, taken to court and imprisoned by Warren Hastings, then governor-general. Reality is a little different. Hickey’s paper was often a gossipy, yellow rag. It thought nothing of publishing scurrilous...

With the focus now on the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, scheduled for early next year, the Congress led-UPA government has once again displayed its keenness to position itself with the agitating farmers by trying to ensure the passage of the Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill during the winter session of Parliament. Assuming that the Parliamentary Standing Committee attached to his department is likely to give all stakeholders a fair...