-The Times of India   A day after Parliament accepted in principle the demands of anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare, some voices of dissent over the movement have surfaced. Leading civil rights organization, Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), has raised apprehensions on the ability of the Lokpal bill to tackle corruption. In a public discussion in Jaipur on Sunday, PUCL activists including its former national head Rajendra Sachar and noted activist Binayak...

Ardent admirers of the Supreme Court will credit it with starting three revolutions in the past three decades. In the 1980s the public interest litigation (PIL) movement opened the doors of the court to every citizen, especially those who could not reach it due to poverty, illiteracy or backwardness. Around the same time, the court sowed the seeds of citizens’ right to know in a few judgments, asserting that sunlight is...

Gandhi, JP, VP. . . Anna is being compared to many stalwarts. But is this gummy old man tilting at windmills or is he a genuine harbinger of change? When Arvind Kejriwal and his partners in 'India Against Corruption' brought Anna Hazare to Delhi as the face of their movement for a Jan Lokpal bill, they little imagined that this gummy old man from tiny Ralegaon Siddhi in Maharashtra would capture...

SRINAGAR: Abu Usmaan alias Abu Adnan alias Doctor, top commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba, shot dead after a 12-hour encounter. The Army had all the names right, except they shot the wrong man. The Poonch incident is now unraveling. Two men - a special police officer (SPO) and a Territorial Army jawan - have been arrested and charged with murder. And the LeT 'commander' was a man picked up from Rajouri and then...

The bidirectional relationship between economic development and health justifies greater investment in the health sector. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) has been described as one of the largest and most ambitious programmes to revive health care in the world and has many achievements to its credit. It seeks to provide universal access to health care, which is affordable, equitable, and of good quality. It has increased health finance, improved infrastructure...