Adjuvants with severe physiological side effect have been administered to hundreds of children during vaccine trials conducted at a government hospital in Indore over the last few years, and that too without the approved Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). The trials conducted on at least 836 children at the Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya, the paediatric division of the Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital, were spiked with adjuvants that contain high levels of mercury, aluminium,...

In an unprecedented move, the Goa Information Commission has summoned governor Dr S S Sidhu for claiming that the Right to Information Act didn't apply to his office. The commission took umbrage to the governor's attempt to escape accountability under RTI by claiming the his office wasn't a ''public authority'' as defined in the transparency law. The governor's stand flies in the face of the Act's scheme under which all government offices,...

Good things should not be curbed. Certainly not a legislation to which so much is owed by so many. The Right to Information Act is a fundamental democratic achievement for India, one that took a long time in coming for a proclaimed democratic state. And when it did, the system became more transparent, if not cleaner. Ordinary citizens, urban and rural, with little or no ability to negotiate their way...

The first step towards opening "secret" files maintained by civil servants and public authorities was taken by Parliament through Freedom of Information Act, 2002. It was replaced by Right to Information Act in 2005. The objective was to give meaning to the word "civil servant". For, the babus had been groomed by the system to hide almost everything from those for whose service they were employed. Attitude is an important aspect...

Saikat Dutta of The Outlook magazine and Vinita Kamte, wife of killed Mumbai police officer Ashok Kamte, are among the seven winners of this year's National RTI Awards, announced on Monday by the Public Cause Research Foundation. The foundation also organised a ceremony to honour the 10 RTI activists who were killed this year. The awards were decided by a jury consisting, among others, of Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy; the former...