Do we, the Indian middle class, see the corruption within us? I was too busy being corrupt to join Anna Hazare’s camp last week. For four days, I heard nothing but stories of our Tahrir Square-like revolution against the corrupt unfurling right under our noses in Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. But it was school admission time and I had some serious palm-greasing, document-fudging, string-pulling, weight-throwing and tout-chasing to do. I had...

Itself the outcome of a bottom-up movement, the Jan Lokpal bill ironically proposes a centralised framework against graft. Without checks and balances. There was never any doubt that India needs a strong Lokpal Act. The protest has paved the way for its enactment. With the exultation over the anti-corruption campaign’s ‘victory’ quieting down, it’s time to take stock. Nuanced arguments—and indeed substance—have to recover lost ground to take the discourse...

Social activist Anna Hazare’s fight against corruption has brought the Jan Lokpal Bill back in focus 43 years after it was first introduced in Parliament The prospects of bumper wheat procurement from Punjab and Haryana may get affected with rain along with hailstorm threatening to hit wheat production in both the states. With over 90% of wheat crop yet to be harvested in both states, experts have asked farmers to wait for...

Two renowned forensic experts have established that the Shanti Bhushan tape where he purportedly asks for money to fix a case was fabricated, vindicating Prashant Bhushan and his colleagues in the India Against Corruption campaign who had maintained that the CD was spliced. Armed with reports from US-based acoustic phonetics expert George Papcun and S R Singh, former director of Central Forensic Science Laboratory who is now with Hyderabad-based Truth Labs,...

Anna Hazare succeeded because he tapped into a deeply felt anger against corruption and systemic gang-up. But the campaign must define itself ideologically or risk appropriation by right-wing usurpers. A future historian attempting to document the Anna Hazare fast at the Capital's Jantar Mantar will likely confront contrasting images: of multitudes enthused and galvanised by one elder citizen's crusading zeal, of Mr. Hazare's almost single-handed ability, within days, to bring the...