-The Times of India Blog India’s Right to Information (RTI) Act has caught the imagination of people in this country, while being appreciated across the world. A great change has come in India this decade in the power equation between the sovereign Citizens of the country and those in power. This change is just beginning and if we can sustain and strengthen it, our defective elective democracy could metamorphose, within the...

-Economic and Political Weekly The RTI is virtually being strangled to death by deliberate delays in appointments. If you find a law uncomfortable, even one that you supported and passed, what should you do? Repealing it would not be politically smart; amending or diluting it will give ammunition to your critics. So the best strategy is to strangulate it, softly and steadily, until it is rendered lifeless and ineffectual. Something like this...

-Livemint.com India is a global outlier on social protection The government’s recent launch of three social security schemes has once again turned the spotlight on the lack of state protection for most Indian Citizens. The three schemes—the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Yojana and Atal Pension Yojana—seek to provide accidental death risk cover, contributory pension and natural and accidental death risk cover. These are, perhaps, the first...

-FirstPost.com Former Central Information Commissioner (CIC) Shailesh Gandhi on Monday lashed out at the Centre for allegedly rendering the Right to Information (RTI) Act "dysfunctional" by taking retrogressive steps. In an open letter written to a section of the media, Gandhi said, "the present Prime Minister has taken preemptive action by not appointing a Chief Information Commissioner at all to render it dysfunctional." Gandhi, a noted RTI activist from Mumbai, was appointed to...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A home ministry helpline offering information on quake-hit Nepal has been swamped by Indian farmers airing their distress, embarrassing a government already under the Opposition's cosh for its "anti-farmer" policies. Compounding the discomfiture, most of the callers are demanding the Rs 15 lakh that Narendra Modi had, during last year's election campaign, promised to deposit in every bank account after retrieving black money from abroad, ministry officials said. "We...