Farmers in Maharashtra flock to 
a new breed of aggressive leaders Its name in Marathi means edge of the hill, but Dongarkada has no hill or mountain in its vicinity. What the village in Maharashtra's Hingoli district has is a cooperative sugar factory controlled by Congress leader Ashok Chavan. Though the Adarsh Housing Society scam rocked the state and forced him to resign as chief minister, the village remains loyal to...

Though Anna Hazare gets much of the credit for focusing the national spotlight on corruption, India was only too aware of the problem even before his agitation. According to a Pew Research poll in October 2010 (six months before Hazare emerged on the national scene), 98 per cent of Indians indicate corrupt political leaders as a “very big” or a “moderately big” problem. Hazare’s campaign did not attune Indians to...

-Express News Service Branding the Adarsh scam a “classic example of the fence eating the crops” and “how a select and powerful elite could collude to subvert rules and regulations for personal benefit” , the Comptroller and Auditor General has slammed the government and officials in its audit of the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society. The report, that was tabled in the Assembly on Friday, called the entire Adarsh episode a remarkable case...

-The Hindu   On the orders of the Special Lokayukta Court here, the Lokayukta police on Thursday filed FIR against three former Chief Ministers as well as 11 senior civil servants of Karnataka. External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, and MPs N. Dharam Singh and H.D. Kumaraswamy will be investigated by the Lokayukta police in a case in which they have been accused of complicity in the alleged multi-crore mining scam. The investigating agency will...

Four deadly cobras among 40 snakes unleashed by farmers in latest anti-corruption protest in northern India Two farmers fed up with bribery demands have dumped three sacks filled with snakes on the floor of a busy tax office in northern India. The 40 or so snakes of different sizes and species, including at least four deadly cobras, sent clerks and villagers climbing on to tables and scurrying out of the door to...