Five years after the enactment of the Right to Information Act, awareness of the law, its provisions and potential appears to be very low. Marking the completion of five years, in September 2010, of the enactment of the Right to Information Act, the Central Information Commission (CIC) held the fifth annual convention on “RTI: Challenges and Opportunities,” in New Delhi on September 13 and 14. It was largely a gathering of...

Gangadhar Gaikwad writes to Governor after work on his house was stalled Gangadhar Gaikwad's neighbourhood hates him. His Scheduled Caste background is a constant source of irritation. And a house that the government decided to build him is a thorn in the flesh. One fine day, construction of the house stopped. “These Mangs [an SC community in Maharashtra] have come and now they want to build a house in front of ours....

Trade unions and labour rights activists blame the high suicide rate in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, on the practices of the garment industry. TIRUPUR has carved out a niche for itself in the world of garments. Its phenomenal growth in the highly competitive global scenario, particularly in the past two decades, has been made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit of its manufacturers and exporters and the sweat and labour of thousands of...

In the last few years in different parts of India the issue of land acquisition has become politically explosive.  This isn’t surprising as land, one of the few assets possessed by large numbers of people, particularly in rural India, is rising disproportionately in potential value as commercial and industrial development picks up, as there is never a dearth of real estate magnates, land speculators, local mafia, their political patrons and...

‘Without electricity, social and economic development is much more difficult.' More than $36 billion a year is needed to ensure that the world's population benefits from access to electricity and clean-burning cooking facilities by 2030, the International Energy Agency said on September 21. In a report prepared for the U.N. Millennium Development Goals meeting in New York, the agency said the goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2015 would be possible only...