-The Times of India Blaming the past governments for the current plight of Bundelkhand region, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged state minister and senior BSP leader Nassemuddin Siddiqui had given the tractors to his sons, which were meant for farmers and sent by the Centre. Addressing a public meeting at Lalitpur, Rahul Gandhi said that when he visited Bundelkhand two years ago, he saw the plight of the...

-The Economic Times   Bureaucracy bashing is India's favourite national vocation. And for good reason. Our bureaucracy has its good share of crooks, criminals and cheats who need to be put away - with or without a Lokpal. The simple counter-question is, does the bureaucracy have a disproportionately larger share of crooks than in other professions in India, and the data clearly does not say a resounding yes.  In fact, there is perhaps...

Till recently, I did not know of a single movie, let alone documentary, which could persuade a viewer to sit under the open sky on an unusually wintry night for over three hours. On Monday night, I was in an audience of about 200 for one such documentary, Jai Bheem Comrade, by activist-filmmaker Anand Patwardhan. It was with much curiosity and anticipation that I went for the first Indian public screening...

-PTI The United Nations and leading world organizations celebrated India’s first polio free year and termed it as a major milestone in their fight against this dreaded disease. The World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan, termed it as the “greatest public health achievement” of India, the Bill Gates, of Bill and Milinda Gates Foundation described it as a major milestone in the global fight against polio. “This is a major milestone in...

-The Indian Express   While Madhya Pradesh government is making all efforts to make the 'Surya Namaskar' exercise on Swami Vivekanand's birthday here tomorrow, a world record, Muslim leaders have opposed the move by issuing a fatwa against it. Leaders of the minority community have termed the move as un-Islamic and equated it with idol-worship, which is prohibited in Islam. They also issued a fatwa in this regard on Tuesday which was also...