Anna Hazare’s Ramlila brinkmanship flamed deep into another night despite the UPA’s many accommodations and in defiance of mounting civil society and intelligentsia opinion that the government had committed to enough on the Lokpal legislation for him to break his fast. Hazare and his core team of Arvind Kejriwal. Prashant Bhushan and Kiran Bedi remained unmoved by public and bipartisan commitment from the highest quarters that key features of their Jan...

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...

Fighting the insurgency will need careful planning and sustained innovation. But New Delhi seems to have only big sacks of cash and even bigger words. Eleven weeks after the annihilation of an entire company of the Central Reserve Police Force in a Maoist ambush in April 2010 near the village of Tarmetla — the largest single loss India has ever suffered in a counter-insurgency campaign — Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...

-PTI   The Centre will soon initiate the consultation process with the state governments on the draft National Food Security Bill that aims to provide legal right on subsidised foodgrains to 68 per cent of India's population. "We will at the earliest start the consultation process with the states. The law ministry has already vetted the draft bill and the same has been communicated to the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee," Food Minister K...

-ANI   Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has said his ministry will be generating a rank of rural households and not conduct a Below Poverty Line (BPL) survey. Speaking to mediapersons here on Monday, Ramesh said his ministry is only responsible for the rank ordering.   "We will generate a rank ordering of rural households, which will be given to the state governments. Our responsibility stops there. It is the state government that is then going...