Five years after Right to Information (RTI) Act came into existence, Information Commissioners feel that there should be more transparency in their appointments. A survey conducted by Parivartan , an NGO, among state and central Information Commissioners , the final appellate authorities for RTI Act grievances and complaints, has found that 66% of commissioners surveyed want a transparent selection process. The survey found that Information Commissioners had reservations about the...

  The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...

The government’s subtle, but significant, move to divest the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of its job of approving the genetically modified (GM) products and convert it into merely a GM appraisal body has taken the biotechnology sector by surprise. The Gazette notification to this effect replaces the word “approval” in the committee’s nomenclature with “appraisal”, thus making it the “Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee”. One obvious reason for doing so...

For the first time, a job quota will be thrust on the private sector if the government accepts a panel’s recommendation for reservations for the disabled and turns it into law. The government-instituted committee has suggested extending to the private sector the 3 per cent reservation for the physically challenged that now exists in government jobs. It also wants a 5 per cent quota introduced for disabled students in private educational institutions...

In an upstairs classroom at a residential school in Mal, near Lucknow, the girls are revising for their exams. As the light starts to fade at the glassless windows, each girl takes a brightly coloured plastic lamp and carries it to her space on the floor. There is no electricity, but the lamps are solar powered. They have been donated jointly by Swedish company Ikea and the United Nations Children’s...