Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram is the nation's domestic security chief, overseeing a broad portfolio that includes battling a homegrown Maoist insurgency and routing out terrorists. The 65-year-old, a veteran of the ruling Congress Party who previously held senior economic posts and played a key role in the country's post-1991 liberalization, is considered a future contender for the post of prime minister. Recently, he spoke to The Wall Street Journal. Here...

The Supreme Court today hauled up the government for including soft drink industry representatives on food standard panels intended to act on complaints against them and asked it to immediately reconstitute the committees with independent experts. The top court has since 2004 been hearing a PIL filed by the NGO CPIL, which demanded that soft drink companies reveal the contents of their products, including pesticide and chemical contents, if any. In 2006,...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act — or MGNREGA as it is commonly known — has completed five years. Since its inception, I remember how joyous I was while becoming part of the process of its being passed in the Lok Sabha. In fact, we were restless for the delay in the presenting of the standing committee's report. I felt it took too long a time in deliberating...

THE WORLD BANK IN INDIA - Undermining Sovereignty, Distorting Development: Edited by Michele Kelley, Deepika D'Souza; Orient Blackswan, 3-6-752, Himayatnagar, Hyderabad-500029. Rs. 895. This book is a collection of essays covering an array of economic issues ranging from agriculture, poverty, food security, power, water, to governance, environment impact and sustainability of growth, and the impact of the World Bank on them. Even a cursory reading would show that it is a...

If the Unique Identity project is such a good thing why is the man heading it unable to answer simple questions about it? Since the publication of his doorstopper of a book Imagining India in 2009, Nandan Nilekani has done a superb job of reinventing himself. The former head of software giant Infosys Technologies was overnight cast in the role of a visionary with his unabashedly free market prescription to turn...