Why are the erstwhile RTI campaigners so alarmed five years after it became law? Why so many dharnas, rallies, conventions and hunger-strikes all over again? Part of the reason is that the silent revolution that the RTI has spawned needs to be defended from surreptitious alterations and manipulations, and partly because the RTI activists are being threatened, harassed and assaulted by the corrupt and the powerful, often with the connivance...

This article explores the issue of dalits’ inclusion in the media industry. It argues that under-representation of dalits in Indian media leads to an exclusion of news on dalits. [This was presented in the “National Conference on Ethical Issues and Indian Media” held on 26 and 27 November 2010 and in Periyar University, Salem, Tamil Nadu.] [J Balasubramaniam (balumids@gmail.com) is with the Department of Journalism and Science Communication, Madurai Kamaraj University.] The basis...

Asking questions can cost your life in India - even if the right to solicit information is protected by law. Amar Nath Deo Pandey is luckier - in less than a week, he appears to have escaped two attempts on his life in a nondescript town in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. More than five years after the introduction of a landmark law that allows Indians to access information held by...

Forty years ago Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan helped rescue the world from growing famine and a deepening gloom over the future of food supplies. Today, public policy projects itself as pro-farmer but it does it half-heartedly, complains Swaminathan. M S Swaminathan, member of the National Advisory Council and father of the Green Revolution says the government's allocation for agriculture is insignificant. Doesn't the Union Budget reflect a new focus on agriculture?...

With political parties across the spectrum asking the government to conduct a socio-economic survey of different communities, the government is considering clubbing the below poverty line (BPL) survey with the caste census. “A recent meeting between the Rural Development Ministry and the Registrar General of India (RGI) explored the possibility of carrying out the BPL survey along with the caste census as an alternative to the community wise socio-economic survey,” a...