-Hindustan Times The RTI Act of 2005 made the government more accountable. But a new set of proposed rules may weaken the law and make it difficult and risky for people to access information In 2015, activist Lokesh Batra filed a Right To Information (RTI) application with the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) seeking details about the appointment of the next Chief Information Commissioner (CIC). But the DoPT refused to...

-VillageSquare.in The problem of male cattle in India, the world’s largest milk-producing country, remains in limbo even as farmers grapple with latest government regulations that severely restrict cattle trade and culling Alpesh Patel, a small farmer in Mogari village of Anand district in Gujarat, owns three crossbreed female cattle and earns supplemental income by selling milk to the nearest dairy co-operative. He strives to keep his herd efficient for milk production by...

-The Indian Express For villages such as Pidia and Gampur who are caught between government orders and Maoist diktats, “consent” means little. In Pidia, of 485 ration cards, there are 25 that are Aadhaar-seeded. In Gampur, the number is 17 of 283. Gangaloor: For at least two months, Mahendra Hemla has been having the same conversation with the villagers. They come, the entire village of Pipdia almost at once, to his small...

-Livemint.com All our solutions in agriculture, besides management issues, are going to come from science and technology, says Deepak Pental, innovator of GM mustard Last week, the environment ministry’s regulator, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), cleared the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) mustard, leaving it to the government to take a final call. If approved, it will be India’s first food crop developed using transgenic technology, 15 years after Bt...

-The Hindu Business Line Aadhaar does more damage than good in welfare programmes It is widely believed that Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) is necessary to improve the delivery of welfare programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Public Distribution System (PDS), social security pensions, and so on. This is a misconception. We have been studying these programmes for a decade, focusing mainly on the source of leakages and...