Rahul Gandhi would by now have realized that the standards opinion leaders, including the media sets for him are way stricter than those applied to the likes of Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal or even Narendra Modi. Read more

The upsurge against corruption has acquired mind-boggling complexities. It has throw up serious questions but no ready answers. Rather than being an empowering experience, it has disempowered and divided public opinion. Read more

Anna Hazare has disbanded his Jan Lokpal Team. It’s the right step, in my view. You’d ask why? The veteran anti-graft fighter is perhaps the group’s sole member to have emerged unscathed from the futile battle. He must enter the political arena with a team unburdened by the weight of a failed movement. Read more

Differences within Anna Hazare’s team and between some of his associates and Baba Ramdev are hardly a reason for the government to rejoice. One can question their tactics, not their resolve or persistence. Despite diminishing appeal, their credibility among sections of the population is higher than the ruling combine’s. Read more

On weekends I have some fun on twitter and get in return a sense of the popular mood. So this Sunday when I tweeted in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s defense against charges hurled at him and some of his cabinet colleagues by “Team Anna”, the response was overwhelmingly negative. Read more

Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption encore at Jantar Mantar was riddled with contradictions the mainstream media failed to catch. There’s a lot for which the UPA has to answer. Read more

Corruption did dominate the noisy electoral discourse in Uttarakhand. But it wasn’t as much about 2G, CWG, Anna Hazare’s Lokpal or chief minister BC Khanduri’s Lokyaukta praised by anti-graft activists. Read more

The year 2012 will be the year of the Lokpal and a slew of other legislations to combat corruption. Politicos may not want it. But they’re destined to have it. Read more

Comparisons are odious. But this one seems irresistible without meaning to equate parliamentary democracy in India and Pakistan. Read more

The Congress will do well not to walk into “Parliament’s supremacy” trap on the timing and passage of the Lokpal bill it had promised to introduce and have passed in the legislature’s winter session that ends on December 22. Read more