-Huffingtonpost.in Secrecy in amending the RTI Act as well as in the appointment of Information Commissioners in the CIC reveal the government's intention to destroy the spirit of the transparency law. With over 6 million information applications filed every year, the Indian Right to Information (RTI) Act is the most extensively used transparency legislation globally. The law has empowered ordinary citizens to hold the government accountable. It has been used for a...

-Livemint.com Inflation for services and a few discretionary items has been higher in rural areas compared to urban centres When income is stagnant, a logical outcome could be curtailing expenditure. But rural India seems to be fine with paying higher prices for services that range from education to matinee shows. The chart above shows inflation for services and a few discretionary items has been higher in rural areas compared to urban centres. It...

-TheWire.in Implementing the loan waiver in Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan will not be easy. It will cost Rs 80,000 crore and might need the states to double the spending on agriculture. New Delhi: On Monday, the newly appointed chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath, proudly announced that his first executive decision was to waive farm loans in the state. While campaigning for the assembly elections, the Congress party had promised that if...

-The Telegraph Their demand for assured remunerative prices, therefore, is perfectly justified There are occasions when one suddenly becomes aware not just of the inadequacy of economic concepts for understanding reality but even of their obfuscating role. One such occasion was the recent kisan march in Delhi. The peasants have been facing distress for long, which has resulted in more than three lakh suicides over the last two-and-a-half decades, in growing indebtedness...

-The Hindu College dropout Jeeva turns life saver for residents of a remote island in the Krishna estuary EELACHETLADIBBA (Andhra Pradesh): Four years ago, when 22-year-old Sykam Jeeva dropped out of junior college unable to cope with academics, he began working at a clinic. A resident of Eelachetladibba island in the Krishna estuary, Mr. Jeeva picked up hands-on basic medical skills at the facility in Nagayalanka, the nearest town on the mainland. Today,...