MP and AICC General Secretary Oscar Fernandes said Food Security Bill will be tabled before the Parliament at the earliest. Speaking to presspersons, he said the Bill will help in distributing rice at Rs 3 per kg and wheat at Rs 2 per kg for BPL families in the country. “Ombudsman and private agency will be strengthened to make a study on the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme....

It was indeed an unusual ''social movement''. A group of ''activists'' who had banded together to draft one version of a bill that would establish a statutory institution to investigate corruption in the political establishment sits in protest demanding the acceptance and passage of its version of the bill. The protest has elements of a social drama inasmuch as it fronts an elderly leader, Anna Hazare, with Gandhian credentials, a...

The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council is expected to recommend the “painless” Tamil Nadu model of land acquisition when it takes stock of the draft central law at its meeting tomorrow. The draft Land Acquisition Bill 2009 awaits Mamata Banerjee’s nod. The Centre was wary of introducing it before the Bengal Elections, but with the polls nearing their end, the panel felt it was time to look at it. A panel source...

Anna Hazare and the civil society won a crucial first battle in the war against corruption. There is a possibility that the Lokpal Bill could be passed by Parliament by August 15. However, that is by no means assured: a number of politicians, a part of section of political establishment and a section of bureaucracy will try to derail the Bill or dilute it so much that it is rendered...

The activism of civil society against corruption has caught the imagination of many Indians. Arguments put forward by representatives of the civil society organisations (CSOs) can be summarised as follows: 'All - at least most - politicians, ministers, bureaucrats are corrupt. Voters are incapable of deciding what is good for them. The police, Central Bureau of Investigation and the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, and all other agencies of the State...