For all his damage-control efforts, Anna Hazare's praise for Narendra Modi has emerged as a touchstone, however unwittingly, for determining the political character of the Jan Lokpal movement. Adverse reactions from his own supporters indicate that civil society is not satisfied with Hazare's clarification that he had patted Modi only in the context of rural development and that, as a Gandhian, he was opposed to communal disharmony. Hazare is under pressure to...

The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council may relinquish its mandate to strengthen the Lok Pal Bill following Anna Hazare’s agitation and the joint drafting panel it has led to, a member of the panel said. The National Advisory Council (NAC) had set up a working group with Aruna Roy as its convener to look at the possibility of adding teeth to the government’s version of the Lok Pal Bill. The member said...

That accountability is vital in a democracy was reinforced at a National Convention of the National Campaign for the People's Right to Information held in Shillong recently… If governments do not investigate corruption, people should have the right and power to do so themselves. When the idea of a people's legal right to information took initial shape in the dusty villages of Rajasthan nearly two decades ago amidst people's struggles for...

Why are the erstwhile RTI campaigners so alarmed five years after it became law? Why so many dharnas, rallies, conventions and hunger-strikes all over again? Part of the reason is that the silent revolution that the RTI has spawned needs to be defended from surreptitious alterations and manipulations, and partly because the RTI activists are being threatened, harassed and assaulted by the corrupt and the powerful, often with the connivance...

Anti-nuclear campaigners in India see the earthquake that hit Japan last week, which threatens the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic power facility there, as a wakeup call for this country’s ambitious nuclear power programme. When India completed a nuclear power cooperation deal with the United States in October 2008, it threw open a 270 billion U.S. dollar market for nuclear reactors. Now members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group are queuing...