Madrasa managements across the country are keenly watching the budget session of Parliament. No, they are not looking forward to the kind of budget that will be presented by the Finance Minister. Their anxiety is to see the promised relief coming in the Right to Education (RTE) Act for minority institutions. The government has promised to bring amendments to certain sections of the Act seen as having a ‘negative impact'...

Kanak Dixit: We have with us Aruna Roy, from Devdungri village in Rajasthan, who has, among other things, been able to take the Right to Information (RTI) from janasunuwais, or public hearings at the village level, all the way to national legislation that encompasses all of India. It is a movement that is truly global in scale. Aruna, a question that has been troubling me quite a bit in the context...

-The Times of India Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has declined to disclose details of her income tax returns under the RTI Act, citing Personal Freedom and security risk. In her reply to the I-T department, she also said there was no public interest involved in disclosing such information. Chennai-based RTI activist V Gopalakrishnan had sought details of her I-T returns from the year 2000-2001 to 2010-2011. The assistant commissioner of income tax,...

While welcoming the report of the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage for India for its comprehensive vision and many well-conceived recommendations, this article focuses on the conditions needed for its promise to bear fruit. Towards this, it explores the political dimension, which comprises the forces and interests that come into play to shape and reconfigure administrative policy and its implementation.   We are grateful to Anand Zachariah and Susie...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...