-The Hindu There is at last some clarity on the politics of the anti-corruption movements. Baba Ramdev’s dramatic call for Congress- hatao and the ‘political turn’ of the Anna movement have confirmed that a movement aimed at rooting out corruption cannot defer a direct encounter with party politics for very long. The manner in which both decisions were announced left something to be desired. The announcement by ‘Team Anna’ invited serious...

-The Hindustan Times Indian taxpayers may have lost as much as Rs. 3.8 lakh crore in scams in the power, aviation and coal sectors over the past eight years, the country's state auditor said in reports tabled before Parliament. The Comptroller and Auditor General charged the government with allotting coalfields and land for power projects and Delhi’s airport to private firms at a fraction of the market price, bringing the corruption issue...

-The Hindu An ideological conflict over the fundamentals of the revolutionary movement has led to a minor split in the Odisha unit of the CPI (Maoist), after the party think-tank expelled senor leader Sabyasachi Panda. Panda, who has now formed the Odisha Maowadi Party (OMP), has questioned the very path of protracted people’s war by the Maoists to achieve the new democratic revolution. In letters addressed to Maoist chief Ganapathy and other...

-Pratirodh Bureau Activists led by Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar have alleged that the much awaited Land Acquisition Bill was actually a "diluted version" of the Standing Committee's recommended bill.   The activists under belonging to various groups, including National Alliance of People’s Movements, National Forum of Forest people and Forest Workers, Kisan Sangharsh Samiti and Sangharsh claimed that the "positive" position taken by the Standing Committee had been diluted by the...

-The Times of India With the UPA government's efforts to build a consensus on allowing foreign retailers in the multi-brand retail sector going nowhere, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday urged the UPA allies to help evolve a consensus on the reforms measure. Participating in the first meeting of the newly set-up UPA co-ordination committee, PM said that it was necessary to build support for the move to let in foreign retailers. The...