-The Business Standard   Hazare's job is done, time now for people's representatives The term “civil society” has been used and abused at will these past few months in India. In a clever coup staged with the active involvement of a section of the media, a clutch of social activists and retired civil servants was allowed to project itself as “a representative of civil society”. A confused government, a directionless ruling alliance...

-The Times of India   Sometimes, nonsense verse captures it. The film character Anthony Gonsalves, inspired by George Bernard Shaw, sang, "The whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the haemoglobin in the atmosphere - because you are a sophisticated rhetorician, intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity." Few words apply better to the current Lokpal Bill stand-off. For this to break, the rhetoric must stop with ground being...

For decades, the victims of communal and targeted violence have been denied protections of law that the rest of us take for granted. It's time to end this injustice. In a vibrant and mature democracy, there would be no need to have special laws to prosecute the powerful or protect the weak. If a crime takes place, the law would simply take its course. In a country like ours, however, life...

The Lokpal is designed to be a comprehensive anti-corruption institution independent of the government, empowered to effectively investigate corruption of all public servants. But most of the critical elements in this vision have been rejected. The latest draft report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on hydrocarbon production sharing contracts and the transfer of oilfields to Reliance is only the latest of the mega scams to surface in...

-The Times of India   The CBI has refused to make public information about disproportionate asset cases against Government Servants, including bureaucrats and ministers, after last week's exemption under RTI Act given by the government. The Centre, through a notification issued on June 9, placed the agency in the organisations listed in the second schedule of Section 24 of the RTI Act which also comprises intelligence and security agencies. "The government...