RAJDEEP SARDESAI, one of the most visible faces of Indian news television today, is the Editor-in-Chief of IBN18 Network which includes CNN-IBN, IBN7 and Lokmat. He has made a name for himself in his 22 years of television journalism with his incisive political reporting of events such as the Gujarat carnage of 2002. As a television anchor, he is known for his signature conversational style. Sardesai has also served as...

I have not read the Private Member's Bill on media regulation that Meenakshi Natarajan was scheduled to move in Parliament last week so I am not in a position to comment upon it, but I am certainly of the opinion that the media (both print and electronic) needs to be regulated. Since my ideas on this issue have generated some controversy they need to be clarified. I want regulation of the...

The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...

The Supreme Court in its verdict on the constitutionality of the Right to Education Act in relation to the reservation of seats for Economically Weaker Section [EWS] and socially disadvantaged [SD] children has rightly upheld the principle of integration. It is hard to see how it could have been any other way. In fact, the arguments against segregation and in favour of diversity in schools have long been settled in...

MGNREGA can only succeed if politics is taken seriously in the design of accountability mechanisms Does political competition enhance a poor person’s access to anti-poverty initiatives such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA)? Just as some economists believe that competition is an effective way to improve management and productivity, in politics too, some hold that political competition is better than single-party monopoly, because it forces political parties...