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...

A Public Interest Litigation was filed in the Delhi High Court on Monday seeking quashing of the nursery admission guidelines framed by the Delhi Government. The PIL contends that the guidelines violate the Right to Education Act. The PIL was filed by a civil rights group Social Jurist. Challenging the government notification’s validity, its lawyer Ashok Agarwal said the move giving private schools a free hand to formulate their own admission criteria...

This order will bind all private unaided schools in Rajasthan, but it underlined the Supreme Court's anxiety towards implementation of Right To Education Act, 2009, which mandated schools to keep 25% of seats for socially and economically disadvantaged sections. Importantly, a Bench comprising Justices R V Raveendran and A K Patnaik also stayed the stipulation of weightage to parent's educational qualification for admissions into pre-primary and nursery classes. Though this is...

Retail giants pushing the European Union-India free trade deal promise consumers a "new and dynamic retail experience" but ignore the fate of India’s "mom-and-pop" stores and some 40 million people they employ. Four years in the making, the EU-India Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement made serious headway during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Brussels Dec. 10 and is due to be signed and sealed early 2011. But the negotiations have...

Four years ago, High Court asked the State to bring the rate to almost nil Infant mortality rate stands at 33, two points down from 35 in 2006 Rural infant mortality at 53 has not declined since NFHS-2 done in 1998-1999 Four years ago, alarmed by the level of child mortality in Maharashtra, the Bombay High Court directed the State government to “ensure that by September 30, 2011, the infant mortality rate due...