The ministry of personnel has shown a surprising lack of alacrity in prosecuting errant babus In August last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was keynote speaker at the annual meeting of India’s premier anti-corruption agency, the CBI. There, addressing officers of the agency and state vigilance bureaus, he made a telling remark, “Our anti-corruption agencies must make the cost of corruption unacceptably high for those indulging in this evil practice.” The prime...

At least two cases of hunger deaths have been reported from Jabalpur district of MP and Chittorgarh district of Rajasthan in the past few weeks. The two states are run by different political parties-- the BJP and the Congress-- but there is quite a lot common in the victims’ circumstances. Both families were among the poorest in their villages but were not included in the BPL list and both the...

During the last three years, two subjects have been consuming the attention of the world community almost to the exclusion of other equally important subjects. One is the financial crisis, which had threatened to lead to a meltdown of the global economy, and the other is the threat to orderly climate changes in the world. As we step into the second decade of the 21st century, the global financial crisis...

The government has decided to simplify the process of issuing disability certificates through a slew of steps that would among other things relieve disadvantaged people in rural areas of the trouble of making long, “cumbersome” trips. The social justice ministry has decided to let doctors at primary health centres issue disability certificates to those with visible handicaps such as blindness, amputations and paralysis of limbs. At present, a person with disabilities has...

With the Delhi high court ruling that the office of the Chief Justice of India comes within the ambit of the Right to Information Act, a long-drawn-out debate will now hopefully find amicable resolution. The ruling of the three-judge bench was on an appeal by the Supreme Court registry against the high court’s single-judge verdict in September. The challenge to the September verdict was that such liberal interpretation of the...