-The Indian Express When Team Anna members Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia announced Friday the decision of their anti-corruption movement to launch a political party, they said it was based on the “strength of the people of India”. But the decision seemed to have shaken the the strength of their own organisation, with prominent members as well as ordinary supporters openly criticising the switch and even distancing themselves from it. Sri Sri...

-The Times of India A middleclass dream that politics can be redeemed by means other than politics has just ended, with Team Anna’s decision to launch a political party and join the fray. Many of his ardent supporters and well-wishers have registered deep disappointment. Anna is becoming part of the problem, they cry. The problem was with the hope that gods out of the machine can serve up deliverance on a...

-IANS Eighteen of the 82 parliamentarians given licences of prohibited bore guns between 2001- 12 had criminal charges pending against them, a study has said, hinting at criminalisation of Indian politics. The 18 MPs were facing cases like murder, attempt to murder and kidnapping at the time the weapons were sold to them. "The study shows the extent to which our politics has become criminalised...we need to take immediate steps to root out...

-The Indian Express Discord between Team Anna and media brings a crucial and overdue reality check for both Unhappy with the cameras apparently Turning away from their cause and reporting the dwindling numbers at their venue, several Team Anna members and supporters have now declared the media biased and complicit with power. Some in the crowd at Jantar Mantar even heckled journalists. The Broadcast Editors’ Association sought, and got, “an immediate apology...

-The Business Standard Consumers say they cannot buy branded FMCG items in mobile phones, customers opt for low-end handsets while retaining brand loyalty Last year, Ashok Das, a farmer-cum-fisherman from the small industrial town of Rishra in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, had promised his younger son a branded television. But last year’s bad crop output and this season’s deficient monsoon made him change his plans and finally settle on a...