-Down to Earth Right to Information cannot be the panacea to our problems if we do not re-evaluate our relationship with the state There was indeed reason to celebrate. It was 2005. A new law had come into being. One which would give ordinary people the extraordinary power to question the government on a daily basis. One which in one fell swoop would hack away the ossified layers of opacity that characterised...
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India completes decade of implementation of RTI Act: Information commissions extensions of government itself? -Nidhi Sharma
-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Retired bureaucrats never retire. Stumped? A look at the information commissions, the transparency watchdogs, all over India reveals that they have become a re-employment arena for bureaucrats. Even though the Supreme Court has advised looking beyond retired civil servants for posts of information commissioners and chief information commissioners, governments prefer retired bureaucrats over candidates with specialisations in other fields. An annual study by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative,...
More »Farmers Find their Voice Through Radio in the Badlands of India -Stella Paul
-IPS News TIKAMGARH: Eighty-year-old Chenabai Kushwaha sits on a charpoy under a neem tree in the village of Chitawar, located in the Tikamgarh district in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, staring intently at a dictaphone. “Please sing a song for us,” urges the woman holding the voice recorder. Kushwaha obliges with a melancholy tune about an eight-year-old girl begging her father not to give her away in marriage. The melody melts...
More »Govt cover on GM mustard report
-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union environment ministry has refused to release bio-safety research dossiers on genetically modified mustard developed by Delhi University under review for possible commercial cultivation, activists campaigning against GM crops claimed today. The activists said the ministry had turned down their request filed under the Right to Information Act for the bio-safety dossiers containing data on environmental and toxicity studies done on the GM mustard engineered with bacterial...
More »Varun Gauri, Senior Economist, Development Research Group at the World Bank, interviewed by Anjuli Bhargava
-Business Standard The World Bank's latest report "Mind, Society and Behaviour" calls for re-designing development policy based on a more realistic understanding of how human beings think and behave. The lead author of the report, Varun Gauri, was in New Delhi and spoke to Anjuli Bhargava on the thinking behind the report and what India can do with it. Edited excerpts: * Right from the cover design to the title, this report...
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