-The Telegraph After debunking faith in numbers, assertions by powerful and charismatic leaders can be projected as the truth The comment on the weaponisation of economics by the former chief economic adviser, Arvind Subramanian, is a telling indictment of the way political interests trump such other considerations as veracity and transparency. The latest round of revisions in the rate of growth of gross domestic product is a perfect example of the use...

-CaravanMagazine.in Nearly a year ago, the government of India constituted a committee of experts chaired by the former Supreme Court judge BN Srikrishna to draft a data-protection law for India. Almost immediately, the committee became mired in controversy—it was first criticised for the lack of civil-society representatives among its members, and subsequently for the opacity of its proceedings, and its inefficient public consultation on the data-protection framework. In recent months, the...

-Hindustan Times The issue of money in politics is a matter of pressing concern across the democratic world. Recent headlines, for instance, reveal that scandals linked with political finance irregularities dot the globe. In France, former president Nicolas Sarkozy is being investigated on allegations that his 2007 campaign received millions of dollars from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In Brazil, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sentenced to a dozen years...

-Factly.in There was an intense debate around the introduction of electoral bonds by the government. Data obtained from SBI reveals that there is hardly any demand for electoral bonds of smaller denomination while 99.9% of bonds sold in terms of amount are of Rs 10 lakh & Rs 1 crore denomination. The Electoral Bonds were first announced in the 2017-18 budget and the scheme was subsequently notified in January 2018. Factly...

  One of the salient features of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005) is that there are provisions in it to ensure transparency and accountability. Section 17(2) of the MGNREGA says that the gram sabha shall conduct regular social audits of all the projects under the scheme taken up within the gram panchayat (GP). In addition to that, Section 17(3) of the MGNREGA states that the GP shall make...