-DNA No one believes the news anymore. Who can blame them? The newspapers are so noisy, filled with scams and slanging matches, that even a top newspaper-bureaucrat like your columnist cringes while scanning the morning’s front pages. I too don’t want to read the papers. Then there’s the matter of credibility: the media is barely clinging to the last vestige of public trust, and that’s only because the institution of the...

-The Hindu India’s roads are deadlier than ever. The high rates of death and disability expose the lack of an organised system of traffic management and safety. Road safety is no one’s responsibility. It is time to make someone accountable. On the final day of this year’s ‘puja’ season in Chennai, a particular roadside temple near the iconic Central Railway Station had the long annual line of vehicles — vans, tempos, taxis,...

-Tehelka The sentencing of Wall Street wizard Rajat Gupta in the historic insider trading case has led to the fall of a one-time icon for many Indians “This is where destiny is taking me.” This is what former Goldman Sachs Group Inc director, Rajat Gupta, told old friend Pramod Bhasin, as he sat with a glass of scotch in hand, in a mid-town bar in New York. Little did Gupta know how prophetic...

-Deccan Herald The Central Information ComMISsion (CIC) has suggested that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal ministry to frame RTI rules, to refrain from splitting the queries made in one application and instead prepare response after compiling all details. Chief Information ComMISsioner Satyananda MIShra asked for revising the present system of sending different queries in one RTI application to different information officers. “Unless the RTI application contains unmanageably a large...

-The Indian Express Governments of three Congress-ruled states — Maharashtra, Haryana and Uttarakhand — have written to Minister for Environment and Forests Jayanthi Natarajan seeking a review of her tough orders that have led to the stalling of key infrastructural projects and slowed down job creation. Earlier this year, the environment ministry had issued guidelines fixing the minimum width of roads between highrises 15-30 metres tall at 15 m, for 45-60 m...