EVEN though the Right to Information Act guarantees citizens their right to know and expose corruption in government offices, increasing attacks on RTI activists have put this most important right in jeopardy. The RTI Act was enacted after a long struggle by civil rights organisations. However, those who dare question the ways of the powers that be and expose them are eliminated in cold-blooded murders. The manner in which Amit...

The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...

One of the most intriguing features of India's agrarian economy in recent years is the persistence of agrarian distress in many regions, even while agricultural credit flow has risen sharply. Rising flow of credit to agriculture is normally associated with buoyancy in the farm sector. A closer look at the data on agricultural credit reveals that what is termed agricultural credit may have very little to do with agriculture, the...

For the first time, a job quota will be thrust on the private sector if the government accepts a panel’s recommendation for reservations for the disabled and turns it into law. The government-instituted committee has suggested extending to the private sector the 3 per cent reservation for the physically challenged that now exists in government jobs. It also wants a 5 per cent quota introduced for disabled students in private educational institutions...

When National Highways Authority of India engineer Satyendra Dubey was killed in 2003 after he wrote a letter to then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he was killed for his disclosure, despite the explicit appeal that his identity be kept secret. His death strengthened the growing sense across the world that such truth-tellers needed legislation to keep them safe (Time magazine declared “2002” the year of the whistleblower, after giant corporate...