-The Times of India MUMBAI: You can now request for a copy of a government employee's service book under the Right to Information (RTI) Act to examine his or her track record in discharging duties in the public service. In a first, Central Information Commissioner Annapurna Dixit last month directed the railways to supply a copy of the service book of a ticket examiner (TE) to RTI activist Chetan Kothari, saying...

-PTI A sum of over Rs. 642 crore has been incurred on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Air travels abroad in the last nine years. This information has been made public by the PMO as part of obligations under the mandatory proactive disclosure clause of the Right to Information Act. The information reveals that Singh undertook 67 travels since 2004 when he took over as PM, of which bills of five have not been...

-The Economic Times The information commissioner's order asking that stringent disclosure norms prevail on political parties is a welcome move. Transparency with regard to political parties, especially when it concerns funding, is extremely important in a democracy as this is where political corruption begins. In the past, there have been allegations of quid pro quo between big corporate houses, who fund parties in elections, and policy changes effected to suit them. Some...

-The Hindu     The killings of Mahendra Karma and his colleagues call not for retributive violence but for a deeper reflection on the discontent among the tribals of central India and their dispossession In the summer of 2006, I had a long conversation with Mahendra Karma, the Chhattisgarh Congress leader who was killed in a terror attack by the Naxalites last week. I was not alone - with me were five other members...

-The Hindu   Neha Khator narrates the story of an NGO that transformed a backward village into a bustling city, with funds, of course, but also by fostering a sense of duty in its residents. Vimla Kanwar, a 70-year-old widow, had a problem. After her husband, a handloom yarn spinner, died of cancer, the officials at the Khadi Gram Udyog took away his charkha. Concerned about finding a means of survival at her...