The Centre will come up with a new National Water Policy next year that will address the issues of water scarcity, management and conservation, Union Water Resources Minister Salman Khurshid said here on Monday. The Ministry has already undertaken an exercise to review the National Water Policy of 2002, and is holding consultations with various stakeholders on the new policy, which would take on board issues relating to climate change. Addressing the...

For all his damage-control efforts, Anna Hazare's praise for Narendra Modi has emerged as a touchstone, however unwittingly, for determining the political character of the Jan Lokpal movement. Adverse reactions from his own supporters indicate that civil society is not satisfied with Hazare's clarification that he had patted Modi only in the context of rural development and that, as a Gandhian, he was opposed to communal disharmony. Hazare is under pressure to...

Any perceptive analyst of democracy will testify that there is no necessary relationship between democracy and a corruption-proof regime, or development, or political stability. If we were to evaluate democracy from the vantage point of the desired ends we expect it to realise, it would fare rather poorly when compared to authoritarian governments, say the one institutionalised in Singapore by its former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew. Yew transformed Singapore...

Over the last 18 months, the exposure of the unethical practice of publishing or broadcasting ‘paid news' has created awareness among the people about how it corrupts the press as well as the democratic process. The Election Commission of India has risen to the occasion by tightening its vigil over the media as well as candidates, as part of its efforts to keep the on-going Assembly elections in four States...

India still has a long way to go in achieving food and nutritional security, albeit the country has achieved record production with 5.4% growth in agriculture and allied sector. This was corroborated by Sharad Pawar, minister of agriculture and food processing, while addressing the National Conference on Agriculture for Kharif Campaign-2011 in New Delhi recently. "Record production with 235.88 Mt of foodgrains in 2010-2011 should not lead to complacency as we...