Arvind Kejriwal, a member of the joint drafting committee for the Lokpal Bill, is disappointed at the way the government has treated the suggestions made by the civil society for the new Lokpal Bill. In an interview with Thufail PT, he talks about the future of the campaign, the charges of the right-wing bias in the campaign and why it is okay to take funds from corporates for such campaigns....

People who play doctor or heed quackery are biting off more than they can chew Whenever a patient with bleeding in the stomach or a child whose fever has not subsided in a week is admitted into Sasaram-based physician B.B. Singh’s clinic, he immediately knows that it’s a case of self-medication. “At least 40-50 per cent of my patients have either had sleeping pills, or antibiotics, or painkillers without a...

On May 23, the president of the Congress, Sonia Gandhi, laid the foundation stone of a bridge being built across the river Ravi, linking Jammu and Kashmir with Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Ten days later, she was in Rajasthan, inaugurating the National Rural Livelihoods Mission. For both trips she had to travel far from her place of residence, which — given her position — would have involved careful planning beforehand,...

As bank gears up for competition, it may further dilute environmental safeguard policies WITH financial institutions of emerging economies like India and China getting big time into development lending, the World Bank plans reforms to attract its borrowing countries. Some of the important plans are to disburse loans faster and on flexible terms. Bank watchers and civil society groups say the reforms, expected to be in force by the year-end, would...

Andhra farmers shun growing paddy this kharif in absence of buyers, storage space Achanta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, hit the headlines in 1967 with a record rice yield in the kharif or monsoon crop season. It was the time of the Green Revolution. N Subba Rao, a farmer from the village, harvested three tonnes of paddy from just one kilogramme of seeds. Other farmers followed suit and the village...