The common man, whose concerns were at the heart of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s two successful election campaigns, doesn’t seem to be the focus of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s budget. Experts and political analysts say the aam admi doesn’t appear to be the dominant concern anymore, prompting speculation about Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi’s role. She has thus far been setting the UPA’s social agenda through the National Advisory Council...
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Stop harassing community, state’s bishops tell PM
-The Times of India The Tamil Nadu Bishop Council on Thursday flayed the Centre for targeting the Christian community for the protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project and requested Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to stop the "harassment". The bishops are pained by the witch hunt, said Archbishop A M Chinnappa. Speaking to reporters here, the council authorities, including Chinnappa and Tuticorin Archbishop Yvon Ambroise, said no one could stop them from...
More »Aruna Roy, Indian social activist interviewed by Kanak Mani Dixit
Kanak Dixit: We have with us Aruna Roy, from Devdungri village in Rajasthan, who has, among other things, been able to take the Right to Information (RTI) from janasunuwais, or public hearings at the village level, all the way to national legislation that encompasses all of India. It is a movement that is truly global in scale. Aruna, a question that has been troubling me quite a bit in the context...
More »Tribal rights Act tied up in red tape by Liz Mathew
Even legislation championed by Sonia Gandhi can get stuck in bureaucratic limbo—witness the fate of amendments that needed to be made quickly to a law that seeks to safeguard the rights of tribals. The combined backing of the National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Congress president Gandhi, and the political leadership of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government hasn’t been enough to put in place new guidelines meant to remove the...
More »A solid sense of security by Manish Tewari
It’s not just the NCTC — we need to provide a statutory basis and oversight mechanisms for all our intelligence agencies The protest by eight chief ministers, characterising the Union government’s decision to give powers of search and arrest to the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC ) under Section 43 (a) of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act 1967 as an assault on federalism, comes in the wake of a “sticky bomb”...
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