-The Indian Express   The controversial compact disc containing purported conversations between noted lawyer Shanti Bhushan and political leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh “is not not doctored or tampered with”, the Delhi police told a court here. The Special Cell of Delhi Police has said the opinions of Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), New Delhi and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) suggest there was no editing or tampering...

-IANS   A group of 20 youngsters enter Delhi Metro, shouting 'Vande Mataram' and urging commuters to sing along. As their voices begin to fade, a middle-aged woman announces, "They don't know a thing about Lokpal, corruption has brought them together." This statement, addressed to nobody in particular, pretty much sums up what the movement is all about. It's not the Lokpal bill, it's not a 74-year-old man on fast who has turned...

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...

Anna Hazare's agitation in defence of his version of the Lokpal Bill seems to have revived public memories of the 1974-75 Jayaprakash Narayan-led anti-corruption mass agitation, especially among the new generation of technology-driven middle class youth in metropolitan towns of India. But can Anna Hazare's anti-corruption crusade become a benchmark comparable with the historical mass mobilisation movements launched by Gandhi from 1920 to 1947 or the one popularly known as the...

Hypertension and diabetes seem to be rampant in two of India's most modern metropolises, Bangalore and Chennai. Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said under his department's programme to test people for the twin diseases, 14% and 21% were found to be suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, respectively, in Banglaore. In Chennai, out of 3 lakhs tested, 50,000 were found to be diabetic and another 60,000 hypertensive. Azad described the...