Government undecided on criteria to identify families below poverty line A survey by the Indian government in 2002 to determine households below poverty line (BPL) left out many poor families. Nearly a decade later, the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MORD) is trying to set the wrong right. But it is unable to decide on the criteria for identifying poor households. As a consequence, the BPL survey that was to...
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Tipping point by Purnima S Tripathi
The huge support for what Anna Hazare espoused came against the background of widespread corruption and government inaction. THE Anna Hazare mania that gripped large sections of society for five days from April 5, resulting in the government capitulating to his demand for including civil society activists in the committee for the drafting of an anti-corruption law, has baffled many people. The groundswell of support for his cause took the...
More »Every fee paid to my father is accounted for: Prashant Bhushan by Gargi Parsai
“Shanti Bhushan has never met Amar Singh” Member of the joint drafting panel on the Lokpal Bill Prashant Bhushan on Wednesday said every fee that his father and co-chair of the panel Shanti Bhushan got for providing professional services as a lawyer was accounted for and tax paid on it. He was reacting to the charge of the former Samajwadi Party leader, Amar Singh, that the SP had paid a fee...
More »Bribes: a small but radical idea by P Sainath
To ask a people burdened with systemic bribery to accept bribe-giving as legal is to demand they accept corruption and the existing structures of power and inequity it flows from. Let's get this right. The Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, wants a certain class of bribes legalised? And says so in a paper titled “Why, for a Class of Bribes, the Act of Giving a...
More »RTI activist denied details of ex-CJI's income
The Income Tax appellate authority here has decided not to provide most of the income details of the former Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, sought by a right to information (RTI) activist. This follows objections raised by Justice Balakrishnan. The appellate authority, however, agreed to provide the assessment order on Justice Balakrishnan's income for 2008-09. The copy of the orders should be provided to RTI activist T. Balachandran after masking...
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