The discretionary powers of ministers and bureaucrats will either be shelved or severely curtailed. Tasked to draft a national policy on government procurements, a group of ministers (GoM) headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee feels that abuse of discretionary powers plays a major role in fostering corruption, be it procurement of rice or purchase of aircraft. With the total government procurement - from the Centre to panchayat level - worth a huge...

The Anna Hazare movement demands no activism from its followers, not even a clear understanding of the specific demands. “COMBATING corruption”, like “promoting peace”, can mean anything to anyone; and precisely because of this “fuzziness” it appeals to everyone. Some join the anti-corruption movement because they are against “corporate loot”; others join because they are against the Nehru-Gandhi “dynasty”; and still others join because they oppose the “corrupt practice of...

Anna Hazare’s fast is over, but the conjuncture of which that fast was an episode is not: Hazare’s own movement, or other similar movements, are bound to recur in the coming months. The question naturally arises: what are these movements all about? And to start with: what was Hazare’s own movement all about? It was certainly not about “corruption” in any definable sense. That word meant different things to the...

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government on Wednesday introduced the politically crucial land acquisition Bill in the Lok Sabha, less than two months after the ministry of rural development began drafting it. The National Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation & Resettlement Bill, 2011, aims to address rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) by providing safeguards for both landowners and livelihood losers while clearly defining the “public purpose” for which land can be acquired...

The government on Wednesday introduced the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill seeking to create two regulatory bodies as part of measures to strengthen safety at the country’s atomic power plants, fulfilling an assurance given by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the aftermath of Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March. The government had said on 26 April it would draft a Bill to create an independent and autonomous regulator that...