-Hindustan Times Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday is addressing a convention on the 10th-anniversary celebrations of the Right to Information (RTI) Act which was brought in ‘to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority’. As the act completes a decade of existence, here is how (and why) it changed the way the government and public servants function: 1. What is RTI? A law that empowers every citizen to seek...
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Measuring well-being -Diane Coffey & Dean Spears
-The Indian Express The central message of Angus Deaton’s work: Becoming richer is not necessarily the same thing as becoming better-off. In the preface to his magisterial 2013 book The Great Escape, Angus Deaton thanks his teachers. “Richard Stone was perhaps my most profound influence,” Deaton writes, “from him I learned about measurement — how little we can say without it and how important it is to get it right.” Important, indeed....
More »Our RTI Experiences: 10 Years On, A Flawed Process Mars Powerful Act -Ujjainee Sharma and Trishna Senapaty
-The Huffington Post The Right to Information Act 2005 has opened up a space where people are able to ask questions of their government and bring the focus on cases of serious lapses in governance. Back in 2010 when we filed our RTI one had to go to the concerned department, find the Public Information officer (PIO) and then complete the necessary paperwork with them. At that time, we remember waiting around...
More »Odisha rights panel seeks report on farmers' suicides
-IANS Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC) on Tuesday asked the state government to submit within four weeks a report over the alleged farmer suicides in the state. Hearing a petition over suicides of farmers due to crop loss in the state, OHRC's working chairman Justice B.K. Mishra directed the government to inquire into the claims and submit a report, said an OHRC official here. The secretaries of agriculture and revenue and...
More »Dr Vandana Shiva, scientist and longtime activist against genetically modified BT seeds, interviewed by Pragya Singh
-Outlook Scientist and longtime activist against genetically modified BT seeds, Dr. Vandana Shiva, talks about why BT has a devastating fallout. A sudden pest attack has ruined cotton crops in large parts of Punjab, bringing biotech, or BT Cotton back into focus. Farmers who used bio-fertilisers in the Malwa region of the state are said to be safe from this latest pestilence. But those growing BT cotton have lost everything. There...
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