Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Dr SY Quraishi, Chief Election Commissioner
Sanjay Kapoor and Sadiq Naqvi
DECEMBER 2010

The meaning of change....
Cover Story and Featured Stories
The 2G scam throws light once again on how corporate power leaves no stone unturned in making governments act in its interest
Sanjay Kapoor Delhi
With Alanis Morissette’s Hand in My Pocket plugged in the ears she walks carefree on the streets. Her long, uncombed hair roughly settles on the shoulder and in between this chaos a bright red bra strap naughtily peeps out
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
Our medical research institutes and health ministry pundits need to do some urgent jugaad in the matter!
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
If I win this election, there is a fair chance that I’ll get a ticket in the next assembly polls
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
Public spaces as visual and tangible experiences of urban detachment and being. A zone of possibilities
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
The nation cried with Babita when she failed to win the gold in wrestling and cheered for Kavita Raut as she ran to win a medal in athletics, the first for India in 52 years of CWG
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
Tens of thousands of crores have gone into scams and Commonwealth Games — why can’t this kind of money be used to recharge the soul and essence of our dying
rivers and the eco-systems they sustain?
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
Rakhi Sawant, the titillating host, has been in the middle of too many cheap, often manufactured controversies, the kind which makes TV moguls and sections of viewers salivate
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
If the police, especially the lower ranks, remains perpetually underpaid, trapped in abysmally unhappy work conditions, the state of pessimism will continue
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
For most manual scavengers, the choice of profession is terribly limited due to caste dogma, lack of education and skills, and paucity of jobs
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
More Stories from this Issue
TITLED SHAHRUKH KHAN and Global Bollywood, the international conference hosted here by the University of Vienna recently was a celebration of the fact that Indian film and media are finally conside
I dont know if this has got anything to do with recent planetary configurations but it appears that our country is living in scambolic times. So, much as I complain frequently and bitterly about how India's English news channel anchors annoy me, I have to applaud them for their sheer doggedness in publicising jaw-dropping scams that have been fairly quietly unearthed by the press. Once the TV-wallahs sink their teeth into a juicy bone they never let go - and I'm beginning to appreciate them more and more for it.
As I write this, the blackout is breaking, and so is the curfew in our television and newspaper spaces. They will have to break it. They can't block it anymore. This censorship will be broken. They can't hold these perverse barricades of information into a corked bottle full of newsy fizz, blocked in their rotting conscience and five-star power corridors, shamelessly blasé, perversely thick-skinned, eternally at ease. It's like The Club, in a Gestapo-like, sinister, collective manoeuvre, has redefined the political economy of silence and censorship.
Earlier this year I got a sheaf of papers carrying some intercepts and analysis of Delhi lobbyist Niira Radia's telephonic conversations with politicians, businessmen, bureaucrats and journalists.
As I write this,the blackout is breaking, and so is the curfew in our television and newspaper spaces. They will have to break it. They can't block it anymore. This censorship will be broken.