By stubbornly overruling the National Advisory Council, the government risks defeating its purpose as a body that speaks for the poor and the disadvantaged. HAS the Manmohan Singh government begun to regard the National Advisory Council (NAC) as an adversary who should be undermined? Going by their exchanges on key issues such as food security, wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and the implementation of the Scheduled Tribes...

The promise of the FRA remains largely unfulfilled, says a committee set up by the Ministries of Environment and Forests and Tribal Affairs. IT seems hard for a government used to controlling most of India's common lands to let go of them. Even though it has passed a law mandating more decentralised governance of forests, the government itself is proving to be the biggest obstacle in its implementation. Other than in...

Thanks to the Right to Information Act, 2005, and also the activism of NGOs and of the media, a culture of accountability is growing in the country. That is the good news. However, the media, NGOs and RTI activists can only do so much. They can focus the attention of the public and parliamentarians on egregious scams, but rarely address the systemic flaws that result in leakage of funds. We have...

A farmer and Right to Information activist from Kutch set himself on fire at a revenue office on Monday after his attempts to get information were thwarted. Jabbardan Gadhvi (45) died after dousing himself with kerosene and setting himself alight in the presence of 11 policemen. Kutch collector M Thennarsan suspended Dhavdi village's official Pravina Jadhav. The victim's brother Malhardan Gadhvi has lodged an FIR against the revenue officer Anirudhsinh...

Right to Information (RTI) activist, Santosh Daundkar, has filed a police complaint saying he was assaulted, allegedly by a builder’s men, at Mumbai Central on Saturday. Daundkar, 38, filed a first information report (FIR) with the Nagpada police on Saturday night claiming that he had been assaulted for trying to expose the builder’s illegal activities. The police have arrested 51-year-old Daniel Abraham in the case and are investigating Daundkar’s allegations. “At around 10.30pm,...