-The Indian Express His vision for fighting corruption was a law that threatened to subvert every institution. Now Anna Hazare has couched his Republic Day appeal for yet another law in a woolly-headed — in fact, bizarre — rendition of Gandhianism. The urge for direct democracy that ran through his appeal for supreme power for gram sabhas is one that’s being increasingly iterated in various mobilisations for democratic reform. To this...

India seems to have arrived at the threshold of polio eradication, but should it lower its guard? ON January 13, India achieved what had only two years ago seemed impossible in the immediate term. The country, which, given the epidemiological data in the new millennium, had come to be regarded by health experts around the world as one that would be the last to achieve freedom from polio (poliomyelitis), recorded no...

Questionable drug trials on mentally challenged persons by doctors in Indore emphasise the need for strict enforcement of medical ethics. IN what appears to be a page out of Robin Cook's medical thriller, government and private doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, reportedly carried out clinical trials of various medicines on some 233 patients who had gone to them seeking psychiatric treatment. As in Cook's famous book Coma, in which a medical...

-PTI   Giving a new mantra to over 70,000 CRPF troops engaged in anti-Naxal operations, its chief K Vijay Kumar has asked them to turn 'junglee' (inhabitants of forests) and hit the Maoists "hard" before eliminating them.  Kumar, who took over the reins of the force after the paramilitary suffered its biggest ever setback in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada where Naxals ambushed 75 men in 2010, has asked his men to be like hunters, who...

-The Times of India    Rashmi Bansal, a student of Activity High School scored 80% in her ICSE examinations in 2007. What differentiated Rashmi's performance from others was that she achieved it without the aid of tuitions. Coming from a family of modest means that was unable to lend much financial support, it was her school that honed her skills and paved the way for her success.  "We have always gone the extra...