AS THE UPA government struggled to hide its embarrassment over the finance ministry note on the 2G spectrum allocation, the RTI Act — through which the note was made public — has become the whipping boy. Senior Cabinet members such as Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily and Law Minister Salman Khurshid have hit out at the ‘misuse’ of the transparency law. Moily called for a national debate as he claimed RTI...

IT IS one of the inspirational legends of Indian journalism that James Hickey, founder and editor of the Bengal Gazette — this country’s first newspaper, with its first edition going back to January 1780 — was a fearless seeker of the truth, taken to court and imprisoned by Warren Hastings, then governor-general. Reality is a little different. Hickey’s paper was often a gossipy, yellow rag. It thought nothing of publishing scurrilous...

-The Shillong Times   Lack of awareness on the oral hygiene in the state coupled with excessive intake of tobacco has gave way to high dental-related diseases like oral cancer. People are less concerned about dental health and even those living in the urban areas lacked proper knowledge on this health related issue and this poor oral hygiene can result to cancer, heart disease and other ailments. “The scenario of oral hygiene in the...

Just months after the 1984 gas leak at Union Carbide's plant here, the Indian government agreed to the 'terms' set by the company on compensation to be paid to victims, a Right to Information (RTI) activist has claimed. Not only that, the government treated the world's worst industrial disaster as a 'railway accident'. 'We have obtained top secret documents dated Feb 28 and March 5, 1985, that show that Union Carbide...

If pain had a face, it could be Narayan Sonawane’s. The 45-year-old Dalit farmer keeps scratching a shaving wound on his face till it bleeds, and makes him flinch. The pain, perhaps, momentarily takes his mind off the gruesome reality outside his hut — a seven acre plot that used to be a Dalit cremation ground until a year ago. In June 2010, it was usurped by upper caste Maratha farmer...