The mid-term appraisal of the rural development programmes during the ongoing 11th Five-Year Plan points out several holes in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Uttar Pradesh. This not only reaffirms the public perception of poor performance of UP, but also sets aside the defence put up against scathing criticism of her government by chief minister Mayawati time and again. The development has come...

To call Anna Hazare the 21st-century Gandhi, as some have started doing, is pure hyperbole, but many would see a similarity in their methods — in particular, in their resorting to fasts to achieve their objectives. This, however, is erroneous. Indeed, the fact that so many people consider Anna Hazare’s method to be similar to Gandhiji’s only indicates how little contemporary India remembers or understands Gandhiji. Gandhiji undertook 17 fasts in...

'Civil society' is a special kind of political capacity, not a repository of any special virtue—and it is not more inherently valuable than the state The story of Indian democracy sometimes plays like a soap opera. The latest episode—not the uplifting kind—involves a confrontation between the government and a mysterious something called “civil society”. Can this “civil society” cavalcade in to rescue a flailing Indian democracy—that once-proud system now being abused...

History has been made in this year's civil services' results. In a rare first, the top two candidates are women. Topper S Divyadharshini is an alumnus of Dr Ambedkar Law University in Chennai. Sweta Mohanty, who did her B Tech in computer science from Gokaraju Rangaraju Institute of Engineering and Technology (GRIET), Hyderabad, has come second. The merit list boasts of five women candidates in the top 25. R V Varun Kumar,...

The Haryana Government has implemented several new schemes for those belonging to weaker sections of society, Public Health Engineering Minister Kiran Choudhry said at Tosham in Bhiwani district on Monday. Addressing a gathering after laying the foundation stone for a chaupal for Backward Classes, she said that the Ambedkar Medhavi Chhatra Yojana had been implemented for talented students belonging to Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes. Under the scheme, scholarships ranging from...