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AnalysisThe public interest in subsidies and tax exemptions
Why is cutting subsidies seen as the only way to cut down the government’s fiscal deficit, asks Kannan Kasturi. What about raising additional revenues by increasing direct taxation of the rich, reducing corporate subsidies and increasing customs duty on items such as gold? More... What is the real goal of the Anna movement?It was clear from the start that the real root of corruption -- unaccountable power and impunity -- was not the target of the Team Anna campaign, writes Rohini Hensman. Is their goal then regime change, or constitutional change? And if so, could the movement unwittingly pave the way to fascism? More... Beyond the Lokpal: Fighting corruption on multiple frontsWhile punishing the corrupt is important, institutions such as the Lokpal or Lokayukta can play only a limited role, says Samuel Paul. What we need is reform of public service design and delivery, transparency in public governance, and the end of discretionary decision-making by bureaucrats and politicians More... Citizen's charters: Putting people firstA Lokpal may reduce corruption, but will it improve the abysmal quality of our public services? For that to happen we need citizen’s charters and legal guarantees of prompt and efficient public services. Madhya Pradesh and Bihar’s legislations on public services are excellent beginnings More... Converging agendas: Team Anna and the Indian RightAnna Hazare’s authoritarianism, the lack of any whiff of democracy in the village he rules, the crushing of dissent, his ultra-nationalism and his belief in caste hierarchy, suggest a convergence of his agenda and worldview with that of the right-wing, says Rohini Hensman More... Lip-service to inclusive growthThe emphasis in the Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five-Year Plan continues to be on achieving GDP growth of 9-9.5%, with the focus on capital markets and infrastructure, and scarcely a mention of nutritional security, agriculture, sanitation, health and education, writes Kathyayini Chamaraj More... The hollow claims of the anti-corruption campaignAn activist explores the reasons for her discomfort with the Anna Hazare ‘movement’ which only ended up externalising corruption and glossing over the structural inequalities that perpetuate it More... Lokpal: A half-won victory and an incomplete Bill?The Jan Lokpal Bill 2011 is an incomplete document that Team Anna and watchful members of civil society need to fully work out if the aspirations of millions who have been fired by the campaign for a corruption-free India are to be met, says Chitta Behera More... Fascism, Maoism and the Democratic LeftJairus Banaji explores cultures of resistance that are hostile to democracy More... Lokpal Bills: Where is the logjam?A comparison of the main provisions of the Lokpal Bill introduced by government in Parliament and the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by Anna Hazare and his team More... Lokpal Bill: The third way?The Lokpal is too simplistically visualised by the India Against Corruption campaign as the single solution to the problem of corruption, says Aruna Roy of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information. Instead, Roy proposes an alternative five-fold strategy in these excerpts from her open letter to government More... Building peace in Jammu & KashmirDileep Padgaonkar, one of the team of interlocutors appointed by the home minister to study the Kashmir issue, discusses the role of the state interlocutor in building peace, and the importance of going beyond positing the crisis as a Hindu-Muslim one, or one of competing nationalisms, to seeing the plurality of concerns, interests and aspirations in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh More... Civil society as a PLU platformWhy does Anna Hazare have more legitimacy as a ‘civil society’ representative than Baba Ramdev, asks P Sainath. Both were self-selected groups claiming primacy over the elected government; both demanded that their fatwas be written into law. But Hazare was surrounded by People Like Us, Ramdev wasn’t More... Bribes: A small but radical ideaChief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu’s suggestion that bribe-giving be legalised dolls up corruption at precisely the time the Indian people are displaying their opposition to it, says P Sainath. The simplistic assumption that bribe-givers will ring the bell after the bribe ignores the realities of power equations in our society and assumes access to legal recourse More... The making of the Lokpal BillA comparison of the government’s draft Lokpal Bill and the Jan Lokpal Bill of Anna Hazare and other civil society members reveals that the likely areas of contention for the joint committee drafting the Bill will be the Lokpal’s power to entertain complaints directly from the public, initiate suo moto investigations with the powers of a police officer and order prosecution of the guilty More... |
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