It began as an expose: the story of how Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh’s relatives allegedly received illegal mining contracts in Madhya Pradesh. Then, a tale of arm-twisting: government officials forced cable operators to pull out the news channel, Etv MP, that aired the story. Now, the story has a twist: Allegations of a failed “paid-news” deal. Officials claim that the channel carried the report—which Singh claims is baseless—after the government...

-The Hindustan Times   With great power comes great freedom. Which, in turn, calls for being responsible. The act to do things freely is one of the fundamental joys of being part of a liberal democracy. With powerful technological platforms and social networking sites such as Facebook, even repressed societies get to savour unfettered expression. But there is a flip side to such a freedom. And this involves the need to respect the...

The Mamata Banerjee government has sought the Supreme Court’s permission to withdraw its Left predecessor’s appeal against a Calcutta High Court order that had described the March 2007 police firing in Nandigram as “unconstitutional” and “wholly unjustified”. If the apex court allows the state’s latest plea, it will pave the way for cases being filed against any erring policeman, officer or government official. The “unconstitutional” tag too will stand, as will the...

Mismatch between potential and experience confounds many a job-seeker, say managers   Mun Ching Yap had gone as a journalist to an airline company to interview its executive official, but her excitement, passion and ability to learn earned her a job as the head of the company's strategic planning department. Ms. Mun, now a columnist and entrepreneur from Malaysia, was 28 years old then. “In Malaysia, the median age of the population is 27,...

Watching the recent debate on the poverty line has been a depressing experience. As the debate unfolded, we witnessed self-righteous commentators engaged in a game of one-upmanship to prove that no one was more concerned for the poor than they, electronic media failing in its responsibility to inform the public simple facts and the Planning Commission proving itself incapable of communicating in simple terms the rationale behind its proposal either...