With an eye on Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh early next year, Vilasrao Deshmukh’s Rural Development Ministry appears to have decided to pin down the Mayawati-led BSP government over the implementation of the UPA’s flagship rural job guarantee scheme (NREGS) in the state. The Rural Development Ministry has constituted a 10-member committee to look into loopholes in the implementation of the scheme in the pocket boroughs of Congress president Sonia Gandhi...

The right step would be for Manmohan Singh to visit Jantar Mantar without further loss of time to persuade the Gandhian to call off his fast, and also explore a compromise. Jantar Mantar in New Delhi is a hot favourite of the average tourist in the summer season. As the temperatures soar this year, the monument is drawing even greater crowds, mainly to savour the electric atmosphere generated by a 72-year-old...

Cash transfer as substitute for state service provision is a dangerous recipe for callously anti-poor and corrupt governance. THE staggering number of recent articles, papers and books on the virtues of giving cash in place of public services to the poor has created an impression that a sort of epidemic has broken out. Economists, policymakers, bureaucrats and newspaper commentators are all infected by it and are in turn infecting others. The central...

Distribution of basic food grains and fuel at controlled prices every month through the Public Distribution System (PDS) could be the largest service provided by the Indian State, touching as it does over 65 million families through a network of nearly half a million retail shops. Given that the urban middle class has little stake in the health of the PDS, there have to be some compelling reasons for the...

Hazare is now fighting possibly the biggest battle of his life, by launching an indefinite hunger strike in New Delhi to press for an early enactment of a Lokpal Bill, legislation that would create public ombudsmen to investigate corruption charges against public servants Anna Hazare is a veteran of many battles—as a former soldier and then as a social activist who has forced at least half a dozen Maharashtra ministers to...