-The Hindu Business Line   The Open Government Data initiative is gaining ground, but it needs to be in step with the Central Information Commission Open government data (OGD) is fashionable. Governments and public institutions in Europe and other parts of the globe are making increasing numbers of datasets available to the public by means of national, regional, local or thematic portals, in keeping with their political commitments towards open government and open...

-NDTV The Chhattisgarh government is guilty, at the least, of culpable homicide for the deaths of over a dozen women in government-run sterilisation camps in the last few days. But the government and in particular the Health Minister think they can escape from their own responsibility by arresting the doctor who did the operations and setting up a judicial enquiry. Really? You need a judicial enquiry to tell you that the targets you...

-The Economic Times For one who had worked so closely to frame the world's largest job guarantee programme, known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, it's not easy to see it succumb to pressure. It's no wonder that economist-cum-activist Jean Dreze will raise his voice against this, along with eminent academics such as Pranab Bardhan and Maitreesh Ghatak. Dreze says corruption related to NREGA and leakages - its...

-The Indian Express The Right to Information (RTI) has never been without its sceptics. In the past few years, attempts to check it have become so persistent that they seem part of a larger design. One sees in them shades of jittery response by the great organs of the state and their moribund bureaucracies, forced out of their comfort zone defined by that perennial bane of good governance, "axiomatic institutional secrecy". The...

-The Hindu Though studies point to an increase in the pace of glacier wastage in the western Himalayas, long-term monitoring is required to study glacier evolution and its relation to the climate At dawn, Mohd Soheb begins an arduous trek to the high camp at Chhota Shigri glacier in the Pir Panjal range in Spiti valley, Himachal Pradesh. From the PWD guesthouse at Chota Dara, he walks down to the Chandra river...