Barring the very corrupt, everyone would support the ongoing campaign against corruption. But not either Team Anna's specific solution or the means it employs. In fact, there is every reason to oppose and condemn the move to blackmail the government into conceding a very flawed demand. A monolithic, all-powerful body that would hold every functionary of the state including the judiciary to account, and investigate and prosecute them if necessary, while...
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PM restores Aruna Roy's place in Lokpal debate by Subodh Ghildiyal
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday restored NAC member Aruna Roy's place in the Lokpal debate, telling Parliament that along with Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal bill, it would also discuss the drafts by Roy and JP Narayan of Loksatta. The comment came a day after BJP dislodged Roy as the reference point for the new Lokpal bill by limiting the reference to non-government input to Jan Lokpal bill in the resolution...
More »Talks follow PM’s request to Anna
-The Telegraph Anna Hazare’s dipping health indicators pushed the government and his team into formal talks on the Lokpal impasse tonight. There was no breakthrough at the end of the two-and-a-half-hour dialogue but neither side suggested a breakdown either. Senior ministers and Congress leaders gathered at the Prime Minister’s house late tonight and the meeting stretched till 2am in two phases. Sources said several issues had been more or less sorted out and...
More »Breakthrough eludes govt-civil society on Lok Pal
-PTI A breakthrough in the deadlock over Lok Pal continued to elude Team Anna and government despite hard negotiations with differences persisting over seven issues, including bringing the Prime Minister under its ambit. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tonight candidly admitted that the government was in a "bind" from which it has to come out with "practical and pragmatic" solutions. Singh's comments came after Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid and three key members of...
More »A differential calculus by Ramachandra Guha
Some commentators have compared the struggle led by Anna Hazare with the movement against corruption led by Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s. A man of integrity and courage, a social worker who has eschewed the loaves and fishes of office, a septuagenarian who has emerged out of semi-retirement to take on an unfeeling government — thus JP then, and thus Anna now. Superficially, the comparison of Anna to JP is flattering...
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