Three bills the Centre has lined up to regulate higher education have been described as “draconian” by private institutions, which fear their enactment will bring the segment under a “police raj”. Two of the bills provide for jail terms and stiff fines to ensure that colleges and universities obtain accreditation before — and not after — starting courses and refrain from making exaggerated claims to attract students. For instance, under the “unfair...

A communications expert who advises the Prime Minister and a Harvard law graduate who helped Rahul Gandhi’s team draft the Lokpal Bill differed on the need for an anti-corruption ombudsman, as the now-shelved legislation dominated an NRI meet today. Sam Pitroda and G. Mohan Gopal came up with different perspectives on the Bill on the second day of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, held every year since 2003 to mark Mahatma Gandhi’s...

-IANS   Five years after a movement that catapulted it into the national spotlight and spelt the beginning of the end of the 34-year Left rule, Nandigram is still counting the losses of the bloody anti-land acquisition movement. Development is at a standstill and many of those who had been at the forefront of the movement and lost their family members say they were used as cannon fodder against the mighty Left, which...

-The Hindu   Describing most of the anti-corruption movements in the country as right-wing and majoritarian in nature, writer Arundhati Roy on Saturday said the Jan Lokpal Bill, which she said nobody had read, was totally an unGandhian piece of legislation. She alleged that it would concentrate power in the hands of a few. Ms. Roy, who was here in connection with the release of a Tamil translation of her work Broken Republic...

One of the great achievements of India is our free and vibrant press. This is an accomplishment of direct relevance to the working of democracy. Authoritarianism flourishes not only by stifling opposition, but also by systematically suppressing information. The survival and flowering of Indian democracy owes a great deal to the freedom and vigour of our press. There are so many occasions when, sitting even in Europe or in America,...