-Newslaundry.com It’s a repository of public datasets on Indian agriculture and socioeconomic indicators and, going forward, on financial inclusion and rural development. Data, they say, is the new oil. It undergirds much of the modern economy and, increasingly, the polity. There’s hardly a socioeconomic sector that big data doesn’t drive today, from the cutting edge of scientific research and technology to the mundane chore of buying groceries. The sheer volume of...

-India Water portal Budget fails to allocate enough to turn the rhetoric of tap water to each household into reality. Union Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman presented the decade's first union budget in the parliament on 1st February 2020. While presenting budget for 2020-2021, she started with the country’s vision for the decade in which she emphasised on water management and clean rivers as one of the 10 points of vision for...

-The Indian Express Does away with need for village revenue officer’s signature; guards against crop insurance fraud. Pune: Early in December, when Bhagwan Ingole, a farmer from Malegaon in Ardhrapur taluka of Nanded went to the Citizen Facilitation Centre in his village to insure his one acre of rabi chana (bengal gram) crop, he was in for a surprise. During the previous seasons, the operator of this one-stop shop catering to most...

-The Hindu Limiting RTI responses based on locus standi of the applicants could create a chilling effect The Right to Information Act’s role in fostering a more informed citizenry and an accountable government has never been in doubt ever since its implementation in 2005. But there have been persistent and growing misgivings. Section 4 of the Act calls for pro-active and voluntary dissemination of information, but only a few Central and State...

-ThePrint.in The Right to Information gives way to the government’s duty to publish. The Centre and all states must emulate Rajasthan. When the Right to Information Act came into force in Rajasthan in 2000, and nationally in 2005, there was a flush of stories for years about citizens and activists using the new law to expose corruption. That road built only on paper, the money released on files that never reached the...