-TheWire.in The report shows that barring Pakistan, the rest of South Asia has also ranked well in implementing RTI laws with only Bhutan yet to enact one. India has slipped one point down to fourth place on the global RTI (Right to Information) Rating index that provides a comparative assessment of the national legal frameworks of 112 member countries with respect to the right to information. The rating was developed and applied...

-The Indian Express Poor Indians are forced to look towards the private sector for healthcare. Bhutan and Ethiopia spend more than India does. Ratna Devi and her nine-year-old daughter Seema (names changed) came to AIIMS, New Delhi. There was a large tumour on Seema’s knee. It had been thriving on the little girl for a year. The family was from Rajasthan, around 400 km from Delhi. The father was a farmer who...

-The Indian Express Preventive detention is being routinised as an instrument of state repression The recent preventive detention (PD) of Khurram Parvez, a Kashmiri human rights activist, and Jignesh Mewani, a Dalit leader from Gujarat, has turned the spotlight on the provision of PD and the purposes it is being made to serve. National Crime Records Bureau data released in September 2015 indicate that over 3,200 people were being held in administrative...

-The Hindu Conservationists blame increased human activity along habitat. Kolkata: Scientists and wildlife conservationists are seeing red over the threat posed to Gangetic river dolphins by the National Waterways project. The animal is protected under Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and is a declared endangered species. The development of the Ganga for shipping is seen by wildlife conservationists as the single-largest threat to the survival of the species, whose...

-The Indian Express The Centre is pushing and many states are implementing Direct Benefit Transfers – and encountering little political opposition The entire focus on ushering in a direct benefit transfer (DBT) regime for delivering subsidies to the targeted populations has so far centered around cooking gas, and to some extent, on isolated pilot experiments with food subsidy. Agriculture subsidies, especially on inputs other than fertilisers, have largely escaped attention in...