-DNA Dr Manmohan Singh rarely speaks his mind and when he speaks, people listen, as claimed by US president Barack Obama. But this time, a rather reserved-in-speech prime minister is at the receiving end for speaking his mind on the Right to Information (RTI) Act from various quarters. At a recent Convention of Central Information Commissioners, Singh cautioned against frivolous and vexatious use of the RTI. While the debate on the uses...

-Outlook Arvind Kejriwal’s public rift with Anna must not distract us from the necessity of his political foray  Anna Hazare may not be part of the proposed political party that is yet to emerge from the womb of what was an unprecedented movement against corruption. The questions he has raised, however, must be answered. Not just because they are his questions; he being the symbol of probity in public life. They need...

-The Economic Times A nation intermittently bombarded over the past several decades by messages highlighting the dangers of smoking, the cruelty of crackers or the crime of dowry is about to get a new one, this time on the perils of cartelisation. A message that mirrors as much as it seeks to address the concerns of a globalising India and a changing society at a time the national discourse is dominated by...

-The Hindu Ongoing agitation in Kudankulam illustrates how State criminalises popular protest To what extent will the State go to criminalise an agitation, especially a prolonged popular struggle against a project seen by the government as a vital necessity, but as a hazard by the people living in its vicinity? It will charge the protesters with grave offences such as “waging war” and “sedition” regardless of whether there is any basis. The ongoing...

-The Economic Times "Sedition" is a legal construct from less enlightened times, when the sovereign power claimed a divine sanction and subjects were expected to live in awe and fear. So what is republican India doing, in its seventh decade, in bringing a charge of sedition against a self-publishing cartoonist with a propensity for scatology and lurid imagery? A convulsive attack of folly that the agencies of the Indian state have...