-The Times of India   With barely a few months left for the crucial Uttar Pradesh polls, the state government is reading motive in all initiatives unveiled by the Congress-led government at the Centre. UP, which is among the worst performing states in elementary education, will be the only state to miss out on sensitizing the massive countrywide year-long campaign on the Right to Education (RTE), which starts on Friday - the...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The media does need to look at its nexus with business interests; injured innocence will not do. Recent remarks by the new chair of the Press Council of India, Justice (retired) M Katju, have sparked off some-thing of a debate in the media. Katju’s comments on the intellectual capabilities of journalists and his low opinion of their abilities have predictably led to indignant protestations by media bodies. But...

A river of bows and arrows slid through the urbane lanes of Raipur civil lines, coming to a startling stop outside the Chief Minister's gated and guarded residence in the autumn air of November 1st, the founding day of Chhattisgarh. As the police whisked them away, the tribal protestors told journalists they were asking for the most basic constitutional right: proportional reservation in government jobs. Eleven years ago, the sprawling state...

-The Indian Express   West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has not adapted well from a life in opposition to being the head of her state’s government. Yet even by her standards, and those of the hollowed-out administrative machinery of the state now in her care, her recent actions have been shocking. On Monday, a religious procession passed through a section of south Kolkata dotted by hospitals, including one for cancer patients...

Two days after a mob of 300 Trinamool workers and supporters stormed a police station in the heart of Kolkata, assaulted policemen and vandalised government and private vehicles, the police have filed a preliminary report of the rioting — and indicted their own men. The mob, comprising members of two clubs in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s south Kolkata neighbourhood, fought street battles with policemen from Bhowanipore police station who had asked...