-Outlook Ralegan Siddhi: Fasting for early passage of Lokpal Bill, Anna Hazare today said he would end his fast only after the anti-corruption legislation is passed in both Houses of Parliament, and announced he did not wish to die soon as he had many other issues to fight for. Expressing satisfaction at the provisions of the amended Bill and thanking the government for it, he termed it as "good" for both the...

-The Indian Express If the BJP finds itself on the back foot today, it isn't because of corruption scandals, but due to the splintering of its social coalition As the stage is set for the state assembly elections in Karnataka, former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda recently made a surprising admission: corruption is not an issue in the upcoming elections, and the precipitous decline in political morality can only be arrested by...

-The Indian Express On the Delhi rape case, let’s keep the indignation, disturb legislative slumbers The Verma Committee Report (VCR) speaks against civil society and political rape cultures. The poignancy and urgency of the VCR owes much to the experience of conversing with rape survivors and traumatised children. A precious message of the VCR is this: one may not take law reform seriously without taking human and social suffering equally seriously. The committee...

-Live Mint Cabinet-approved Bill may stir up controversy after it left out a key proposal to bring CBI within its purview On the day that it approved the anti-graft Lokpal Bill, the first murmurs of dissent against finance minister P. Chidambaram’s call for expenditure cuts surfaced in the Union cabinet—over the seemingly piffling amount of `90.38 crore.   The cabinet eventually overruled the finance ministry’s objections and approved the infusion of the money for...

-The Indian Express Increasing frequency and intensity of protests reflect a deeper crisis in Indian democracy: the failure of civil society In the last five years, citizens have poured out in large numbers at Jantar Mantar and India Gate (and in many other parts of the country) to ask the state to hear their demands. In 2006, marches and sit-ins forced the state to re-examine the Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Mattoo cases....