-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Accepting the argument of political parties that poll promises or "freebies" are related to the Directive Principles of State Policy, the Election Commission is considering a pragmatic set of guidelines that would allow freebies as long as they are targeted at the economically and socially weaker sections, religious minorities, women and populations living in remote, border or Insurgency/disaster-hit areas. Directive principles are broad policy guidelines considered...

-The Indian Express   How Chhattisgarh became a sanctuary, and then a laboratory, for Naxals Some time ago, Chhattisgarh hit the headlines because of a Maoist attack on state Congress leaders, in which V.C. Shukla and Mahendra Karma died. Since then, the Congress has accused the BJP government of a conspiracy, and some BJP leaders have accused former chief minister Ajit Jogi of being part of a conspiracy himself. Politicising this tragic episode...

-The Hindu A large section of Indian voters appear distinctly uncomfortable with the way the Indian state deals with issues of internal security, particularly the issue of the Maoist Insurgency. While they recognise it as the ‘greatest threat', there is a clear disapproval for an approach based on deploying only security forces in large numbers. The CNN IBN-The Hindu Election Tracker survey, conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies...

-The Hindustan Times The audacious ambush and bloody massacre of more than two dozen political leaders and their security guards in Darbha valley of Sukma district in south Chhattisgarh, raises again profoundly important questions about the legitimacy of violence as an instrument to battle injustice and oppression. Resistance to injustice is widely endorsed as the highest human duty in most cultures, but the debate is about the legitimacy of deploying violence in...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: The recent Maoist violence in Bastar, which left 28 people dead, is no aberration. The Global Peace Index (GPI) 2013, which was released on Tuesday, has ranked India among the 25 least peaceful nations to live in. The country was placed 141 among 162 nations, having lost more than two lives a day - or a staggering 799 persons - to internal conflicts in 2012. Giving India...