The headlines in the media, the constant talk of how deep corruption has sunk in our body politic and the nefarious role played by ill-gotten contributions to political parties is a spectre, haunting the public all the time. But why is the government still not persuaded to seriously consider enacting an effectively genuine Lokpal legislation to deal with this menace of corruption? If the draft of the Lokpal Bill 2010 is...

Telecom minister Kapil Sibal today termed “utterly erroneous, baseless and sensational” the government auditor’s estimate that the alleged 2G scam resulted in a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore. Sibal gave a detailed explanation of the priorities that drove the telecom policy and the benefits over the years to “the aam aadmi” — something his predecessor A. Raja did not or could not articulate till now. Drawing a parallel with free...

If home minister P Chidambaram’s recent letter to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is any indication, it has taken the Union home ministry seven years to realise that arming civilians to fight Naxalites is a bad idea. How much longer will it take for them to realise that the current paramilitary-based approach in Chhattisgarh is similarly bound to fail? From 2003 onwards, the home ministry has followed a policy of...

The Indian government should drop sedition cases against rights activists Binayak Sen, Arundhati Roy, and others, the Human Rights Watch said Thursday. The international body has also urged the Indian parliament to repeal the colonial-era sedition law, as it has been used by the authorities to 'silence peaceful political dissent'. The authorities have pursued sedition charges against peaceful activists, despite a Supreme Court ruling that prosecution under the sedition law requires incitement...

India’s food inflation accelerated for the fifth straight week to the highest in more than a year, reinforcing fears it will spill over to broader prices and pile pressure on the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to tighten monetary policy. Unseasonal rains have pushed up prices of vegetables such as onions and tomatoes in recent weeks, and the authorities are bracing to live with elevated price levels in the near term. Onion...