Aruna Roy, the prominent political and social activist who spearheaded the campaign to institute the Right to Information Act in the 1990s, is an ardent critic of the anti-people and exclusionary policies of the first and the second United Progressive Alliance governments. A recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2000, she heads the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana (a trade union of workers and peasants) in Rajasamand, Rajasthan,...

Nearly 4.9 crore rural households were provided employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the last fiscal, says the UPA-II's report card released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday. The average wage rate per day in the programme has gone up by Rs.25 in the last three years, says the report which outlines steps taken in the past year for rural renewal, a thrust area...

The PPP model proposed in the Eleventh Plan provides for no government or social control over education. It will lead to the privatisation and commercialisation of education using public funds.  Public-private partnership (PPP) has become a fashionable slogan in new development strategies, particularly over the last couple of decades. It is projected as an innovative idea to tap private resources and to encourage the active participation of the private sector...

In India peasantry is under assault. There is a five-pronged attack on this class and the mighty Indian state is sometimes an active and sometimes a passive abettor. The first point of attack is from the corporate sector. The corporate sector is in a land grab mode. Though not justified, one could understand their urge to get land for industry and real estate purposes. Not that they are causing aggressive...

The RTI juggernaut has begun to roll over Indian babudom. Let us not turn the clock back. Over the past week, there have been reports that the Prime Minister's Office, responding to Sonia Gandhi's muscular intervention, is backing off on the dreaded amendments to the Right to Information Act, 2005. On the other hand, it is worth remembering that the amendments scare has never been too far away. It resurfaced as recently...