Hard News | Political and Current Affairs Magazine of India : Politics in India and News about Indian Politics

cover July

Monsoon Divorce
The PM, confident of Sonia Gandhi's support, is sitting pretty, aware that the genie he has unleashed could reshape India's secular politics. But the last word has not been said on how power politics is going to unveil in the wet months of July and August
Sanjay Kapoor Delhi

Destination Delhi: Fuel Station Bangalore?
The verdict in Karnataka might have as little to do with the result of a general election as the verdict in key northern states in 2003 had to do with the 2004 Lok Sabha elections
Jai Murg Mumbai
hindutva, not so rosy
Despite the BJP doing well in assembly polls in seven states with 113 Lok Sabha seats at stake, and despite getting 30 per cent plus vote share in many states, there is nothing to indicate that the scales are favourably tilted towards the party in the coming parliamentary elections
Anil Verma Kanpur
Bitter is Sweet
An enemy of an enemy is an ally. That's how arch-foes Congress and SP are singing the lullaby together, however jarring it may sound
Pradeep Kapoor Lucknow
The Man is the Message
There are conclusions you might actually agree with. The rider is that the book might tease out the chauvinistic angst of a reader, instead of mitigating it
Prasenjit Chowdhury Kolkata

It’s been a hard day’s night

But working like a dog might not lead to a full wage in the corrupt, feudal interiors of rural India. Hardnews enters the twilight zones of UPA's miracle project across the country, as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme stumbles from stunning life affirmation and optimism, to the inevitability of blind alleys and sudden death

Akash Bisht Delhi Hardnews

'Exposing corruption tends to be dangerous'

Eminent Economist Jean Dreze has stretched the threshold of a world-renowned public intellectual, breaking boundaries of language, knowledge, class and country, in perhaps a perfect but terribly difficult synthesis of theory and praxis. His dogged struggle for the right to the information, right to food in starvation and drought prone zones, and the implementation of the NREGA across the hungry and arid bylanes of Indian villages for several years now, is an established truth. After Lalit Mehta's murder, Dreze has been fighting against all odds in the Indian interiors to get justice for the slain NREGA activist who was hacked to death by unknown assailants. He has been organising scores of public meetings in different villages of Palamu district and adjoining areas to raise awareness amongst the locals about the NREGA scheme. Even while sections of the bureaucracy, police and contractors pitch their might against this stoic, selfless and frail man in a cotton kurta, he refuses to relent. Most often reclusive and shy of publicity and the media, and currently inaccessible to all forms of communication in remote regions, Jean Dreze speaks to Akash Bisht in an exclusive interview on e-mail from Palamu district of Jharkhand.