-The Times of India MUMBAI: On the eighth anniversary of India's landmark transparency legislation today, data mined on the Right to Information (RTI) Act shows it is, indeed, India's sunshine law, with an estimated 40 lakh people using the Act during 2011-12, the latest year for which all-India data is available. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), an independent organisation closely associated with the RTI legislation, data-mined annual reports filed by the...

-PTI New Delhi: To mark the second International Day of the Girl Child, UNICEF on Friday highlighted the power of innovation to get more girls in schools and improve the quality of learning for all children. Millions of girls are still out of school, including 31 million primary school aged girls who are denied quality education and a chance to reach their full potential. According to UNICEF, evidence shows that even a single...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Much work remains to be done if the new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act has to mark a meaningful shift for India's adivasi communities. Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) Chitrangada Choudhury (chitrangada@csds.in) is a multimedia journalist and researcher, and currently with the Publics and Policies program at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Among the worst excesses committed in India's six decade-old democracy, the forcible displacment...

-Outlook Bhubaneswar: Rejecting a UN panel recommendation for halting POSCO's port-to-steel plant project, both the Republic of Korea and the Odisha government today exuded optimism to go for the ground-breaking ceremony of the proposed facility near Paradip early next year. "We are happy that the state government has acquired the land required for POSCO project. I hope everything will be ready and the POSCO project work will start soon," Korean ambassador Joon-gyu...

-Down to Earth   This defies logic. Despite rapid economic growth, India has often been placed below sub-Saharan African countries that have very high number of malnourished children. But the government has no data to clarify its position. In the first week of September, Parliament’s Committee on Estimates criticised the government, saying: “The committee is surprised to note that in the modern era of Information and Technology, there is no recent official...