Karnataka's new Lokayukta Shivaraj Patil has resigned within a month-and-a-half of taking charge. It is not every day that judges are shamed into quitting. So what exactly was his crime?

Patil, who retired from the Supreme Court, had taken over as ombudsman from the high-flying Santosh Hegde, now a prominent member of Team Anna. Karnataka had seen two popular Lokayuktas before Patil: Venkatachalaiah and Hegde. They had trapped many greedy politicians and government officials, and provided hope against a venal administration.

Just a week before his term ended, Hegde had presented a report on illegal mining that felled Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa, and indirectly caused the jailing of minister Janardhana Reddy. Hegde had been complaining he needed more powers to act against the corrupt.

The first thing Shivaraj Patil said, after assuming charge, was that he needed adequate powers, and not absolute powers. In a rampantly corrupt Karnataka, much was expected of him. But even before Patil

Narendra Modi ended his three-day fast Monday evening with a speech rich in promise and rhetoric. By proclaiming his mission had just begun, he confirmed everyone's suspicion that he wants to be prime minister in 2014, when the next parliamentary elections are due.

The fast was a Modi show rather than a party gala. Of course, senior BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu was around, and obliged Modi by saying he was prime ministerial material. But the fast likely upset party patriarch L K Advani by stealing his rath yatra thunder.

Modi's high-profile demonstration, which he said was in the cause of communal harmony, did many things at many levels: put the Congress on the defensive, showed up the cracks in the National Democratic Alliance, and, within the BJP, revealed who was in his camp.

If he wants to rise in national politics, Modi will have to erase the shame of the 2002 communal riots that claimed over a thousand lives. That's not going to be easy, and he hasn't apologised for it yet. Even

Vinutha Mallya

After reading Narendrabhai’s letter to the citizens of his state, via his blog, I want to say: such expression is rare in a CEO of any state.

It was 2004, not long after the riots. I remember alighting in the Ahmedabad station at 4:30 am, waiting for my usual defense mechanism to come up. It didn’t. For the first time in my entire life, in which I’d by then lived in four cities as an adult, and that includes London, here was a city where I didn’t feel the instinctual fear of being attacked because I was a woman.

Gujaratis are usually warm, nice, well-meaning people, who look out for each other, and show far more respect to women in day-to-day life than I have seen in any other part of this country.

So how did an entire state, in the capital city of which I’ve walked alone after midnight without any fear, become so full of hate one fine day?

Maybe it was a temporary, collective loss. The loss of sadh-bhavana. This was in its karma.

When the prime CM and prime

The arrest of an action hero for domestic violence has triggered a bizarre string of events in the Kannada film industry.

Darshan, who stars in blood-and-gore revenge dramas, took his macho image too far when he assaulted his wife Vijayalakshmi and threatened to kill their infant child with his licensed revolver.

The moment he was jailed, influential people in the industry rushed to the hospital where Vijayalakshmi was admitted, and succeeded in getting her to dilute her police complaint. She is now saying she sustained injuries after a fall, and not because she was battered by Darshan.

Something inexplicable happened simultaneously: The Kannada Producers' Association banned actress Nikita for three years, saying she had created a rift in her co-star Darshan's marital life.

For many, the action exposed the male bias in the industry, and a complete disregard for fair play. How could they ban Nikita without giving her any notice or seeking an explanation, especially when there was no