Anna Hazare’s fast is over, but the conjuncture of which that fast was an episode is not: Hazare’s own movement, or other similar movements, are bound to recur in the coming months. The question naturally arises: what are these movements all about? And to start with: what was Hazare’s own movement all about? It was certainly not about “corruption” in any definable sense. That word meant different things to the...

The flawed Bill on food security has not received the kind of publicity that the Lokpal Bill has, but that does not diminish its significance. “THIS government has divided everything and everyone. There are different cards for different sections of the poor. If my employer, taking pity on me, gives me an old television, I am not entitled to a yellow card [Below Poverty Line card]. My son who is...

What is government planning to do with the Public Distribution System (PDS)? The answer lies in an old adage: Give a dog bad name and hang him! The common impression is that the PDS is not working because of pilferage and hence it is taken as a foregone conclusion that it needs to be replaced with cash transfer. Two empirical studies conducted recently, one of them by noted economists Jean Dreze...

India is the worst among the six top Asian economies when it comes to the representation of women in the workforce at junior and middle-level positions, according to the Gender Diversity Benchmark for Asia 2011 report. “It performs only slightly better than Japan at senior level positions,” said the report released by Community Business, a non-profit organization focusing on diversity and inclusion in Asia. The report surveyed women at different levels across...

Eleven years after birth, Jharkhand is still staggering under the oppressive weight of multi-crore land scams — one of the most ignoble pulled off in the capital and the latest unearthed in temple district Deoghar — and it squarely blames Big Brother Bihar for this physical handicap. As many as 82,000 land maps belonging to the state are gathering dust at the Gulzarbag Printing Press in Patna, leaving ample scope for...