Hegde’s nemesis

Karnataka chief minister Ramakrishna Hegde’s bad patch may finally be over. The “unanimous election” of his nominee, M.P. Prakash, as the new Karnataka Pradesh Janata Party president on 5 October has proved the chief minister’s supremacy in the state unit in spite of the challenge from a vocal dissident group.

In its present form, the consumer protection act does not allow recourse to consumer courts for instances such as these. But if the consumer awakening implies that providers of a service/amenity or product must be accountable for quality to its consumers or purchasers, then surely there is scope to widen the purview of COPRA. View […]

This is an edited version of Rohini Nilekani’s conversation with Barkha Dutt on her new book and the intersection of the markets, society, and state. I haven’t spoken a lot about the incident that I mention in the introduction of my book, which started me on my engagement with civic issues, because tragedies happen in […]

Ghazal singers have become the new cultural celebrities in India. They sing to packed houses, their programmes are very popular on television, and their records sell better than many Hindi film records. Why have they suddenly become so popular? ROHINI SOMAN investigates.