-Down to Earth Money pumped in development schemes in Bihar is giving rise to a new breed of village heads, flush with money and flexing muscles About a year ago killings and a spurt in the purchase of arms and luxury vehicles in extremely backward villages started to bother the Bihar police. It spied and found that mukhiyas, or village heads, had multiplied their assets beyond imagination. It took the police six...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Over 75% of the funding received by political parties is from unknown donors. This flies in the face of claims made by parties that details of their financial statements are in the public domain. According to data analyzed by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the total funds received by six national political parties between 2004-2005 and 2011-2012 was Rs 4,895.96 crore of which only 8.9%...

-MoneyLife.in After several weeks of disgust over political parties trying to slip out of the RTI Act, good news beckons for citizens in India and abroad who want to file RTI online Do you want to seek information under Right to Information (RTI) about public distribution of grains or demand a copy of your answer sheet in your Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination or seek details about a water conservation project...

-Newslaundry.com There's always outrage at the government ad spend on the death and birth centenaries of our erstwhile politicians. On Rajiv Gandhi's death centenary in 2013, we carried a report with incorrect figures. Following which, we filed a Right To Information (RTI) application to ask for the amount of advertising spend by the government on Rajiv Gandhi's death centenary ads in the Delhi editions of various English newspapers. When we contacted...

One landmark law, the Right to Information Act, has helped over a thousand adivasis in north Maharashtra in getting closer to their rights under another landmark law – the Forest Rights Act. The latter was legislated in 2006 giving forest dwelling and other adivasi communities individual and community rights to lands they had traditionally cultivated and occupied. But communities in rural India have faced an uphill battle in getting the...