There can be little question that the news media, print as well as television, have contributed significantly to bringing the issue of corruption to political India's centre stage. The focus on the corruption of elections through ‘cash for votes' comes in tandem with the proactive intervention by the Election Commission of India during the April-May elections to State Assemblies. There can also be little doubt that the U.S. Embassy Cables,...

Shanti Bhushan denies allegations on undervaluation of property Ahead of the first meeting of the newly-formed joint committee on the anti-corruption Lokpal Bill here, Anna Hazare-led members said here on Friday that they wanted the draft Jan Lokpal Bill prepared by the civil society as the “working or the base draft.” The joint committee, chaired by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and co-chaired by former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan, is meeting here on...

The union finance minister welcomed the gesture made by veteran BJP leader L K Advani for assuring the party’s support to the Lokpal Bill when tabled in the Parliament Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday said India would endorse the UN convention on graft which the country signed in 2005. “India will ratify the UN convention on graft. There is a long legal procedure which is needed to be followed,” the...

Gandhi resorted to some 30 fasts, of which one-third were directed at himself, for ‘atonement’ or self-purification, one-third were directed against the raj and one-third at India’s social mores. A more honest trinity cannot be imagined. The latter two kinds of fasts were meant to make an impact on the ‘other side’; they were part-fasts and part- hunger strikes, part anashan and part bhukh-hartal, though he derived from each a sense...

Extreme poverty and clamour for firewood have forced some people in Nayagram into extreme occupations. One such is gathering kolmipoka, an insect with medicinal value After walking almost 30km along rutted roads since the morning, middle-aged Bonchu Nayek returns to his humble home, a two-room hut, as darkness descends on Nayagram—one of West Bengal’s poorest villages—with his day’s earning of Rs10. Nayek, whose forefathers were hunters, belongs to the Lodha-Sabar tribe. With...