-The Times of India   Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has offered a new formula to end the Lokpal deadlock with Team Anna. Replying to the debate on corruption in Lok Sabha, Prime Minister said the government is ready to debate all versions of the Lokpal Bill in circulation at present. The PM said the aim was to give the country a strong Lokpal and for that the government was ready to involve all sections...

The Anna Hazare fast has seen an outpouring of support across the country. The government Lokpal Bill is unacceptable. A fresh Bill is needed for an effective Lokpal. There has been an outpouring of support all over the country in favour of the fast conducted by Anna Hazare for the Jan Lokpal Bill. The agitation has found support predominantly from the urban middle classes and a substantial section of youth belonging...

Prakash Karat believes Anna Hazare’s movement is amorphous, anti-political, supported by Right-wing forces and the corporate Media, but still feels the government has “no other way” but to bow to public pressure and hold talks with the group. “The middle class propensity to be anti-political, to blame all politicians and to hold Parliament in contempt are all on display in the Anna Hazare movement,” the CPM general secretary wrote in party...

The substitution of one man for the people, and the reduction of the people's role merely to being supporters and cheerleaders for one man's actions, is antithetical to democracy. The Central government's flip-flops on Anna Hazare are obvious: it went from abusing him (through the Congress spokesperson) for sheltering corruption, to extolling him for his idealism; from arresting him, without any justification, and getting him remanded to judicial custody for a...

In the current hullabaloo about the lok pal bill and the Anna agitation, one question has frequently been raised, both by protagonists of the Congress and the government and by constitutionalists and legal experts: however laudable the goals of Anna and his supporters, aren’t the methods adopted by them illegitimate? Doesn’t a fast unto death amount to blackmail of the legislature? Isn’t it an attempt by the unelected to usurp...