-The Indian Express   The issue of fertiliser shortage took an ugly turn on Sunday when a farmer, Manjit Bhoi (35) of Talab village under Dhankauda block allegedly committed suicide by consuming pesticide as he could not afford urea to save his crop. It was only on Friday that farmers under the banner of Sambalpur Zilla Krushak Surakhya Sangathan had gheraoed Agriculture Deputy Director Ashok Kumar Mohanty demanding measures to prevent black...

Mother Teresa's path was a unique one. While she never deviated from her faith, she reached out to millions of her special constituency, the deprived and the dying, recognising their faces to be the face of her God. A few weeks ago I visited one of Mother Teresa's Sisters who was admitted for surgery in the PGI hospital in Chandigarh. Haryana Chief Secretary Urvashi Gulati and the Principal Secretary to the...

-IANS   A group of 20 youngsters enter Delhi Metro, shouting 'Vande Mataram' and urging commuters to sing along. As their voices begin to fade, a middle-aged woman announces, "They don't know a thing about Lokpal, corruption has brought them together." This statement, addressed to nobody in particular, pretty much sums up what the movement is all about. It's not the Lokpal bill, it's not a 74-year-old man on fast who has turned...

In the current hullabaloo about the lok pal bill and the Anna agitation, one question has frequently been raised, both by protagonists of the Congress and the government and by constitutionalists and legal experts: however laudable the goals of Anna and his supporters, aren’t the methods adopted by them illegitimate? Doesn’t a fast unto death amount to blackmail of the legislature? Isn’t it an attempt by the unelected to usurp...

Shehla Masood’s assassin was obviously someone from among those she was never afraid to target as an RTI activist. Shehla’s life was on fast track — always in a hurry to set right wrongs being done by those entrusted with powers under the Constitution. It was brutally cut short by a killer last Tuesday. Conceding Union minister Jairam Ramesh’s demand to immediately arrest the killers, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh...