The Union Cabinet approves a new Bill to protect whistle-blowers, but there is concern whether its provisions will amount to much. ON March 22, a special court in Patna pronounced three persons guilty in the murder of Satyendra K. Dubey, a civil engineer from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He was shot dead on November 29, 2003, for blowing the whistle on corrupt practices in the Golden Quadrilateral Project in Bihar....

Almost a week after RTI activist Amit Jethava was shot dead near the Gujarat High Court, the minister-in-charge of RTI Act on Thursday denied any move to frame a law to protect RTI activists while the Central Information Commissioner said it was the “job of the police” to protect them. “There is no proposal before the government to frame a specific law to protect RTI activists,” Minister of State for Public...

The Central Vigilance Commission is examining all construction work related to Commonwealth Games being undertaken by civic agencies following complaints of alleged large-scale corruption. The anti-corruption watchdog has also decided to formulate vigilance guidelines to check Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects. "Apart from expeditiously attending to complaints relating to the Games, the Commission, through its Chief Technical Examiner's Wing, is keeping a close watch on all the contracts and works undertaken...

Last summer, about 150 families of Kachan village in Jharkhand’s Palamu district decided to pool funds to repair their only community tube well. A drought, the worst in many years, had dried up two ponds; there were no wells around; and the tube well had been dysfunctional for a year. It took a lot of hardship and one whole month for them to put together what the mechanic had asked...

The ministry of personnel has shown a surprising lack of alacrity in prosecuting errant babus In August last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was keynote speaker at the annual meeting of India’s premier anti-corruption agency, the CBI. There, addressing officers of the agency and state vigilance bureaus, he made a telling remark, “Our anti-corruption agencies must make the cost of corruption unacceptably high for those indulging in this evil practice.” The prime...