The former Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, who is currently the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission has objected to disclosing his income in the past five years as sought by an applicant under the Right to Information Act. Following his objection, the Income Tax Department has rejected the application made by T. Balachandran of Kochi. Dr. Balachandran had sought from the department certified copies of the income returns...

Illegality in India today touches almost every economic activity. It is both systemic and systematic. The Indian ruling class faced its severest crisis of credibility in 2010. Its past caught up with it and skeletons and scams were spilling out of its closets. The scams have a symbiotic relationship with the black economy. The number of scams is growing and so is the size of the black economy, which has reached...

‘The least that every worker in field and factory is entitled to is a minimum wage which will enable him to live in modest comfort, and humane hours of labour which do not break his strength or spirit...,’ Jawaharlal Nehru declared stirringly in his presidential address to Congress in Lahore in 1929. Eight decades later, the Union government of free India resolved that it would not pay the minimum wage...

There has been a gross simplification of the issues involved in the exposures in the Radia tapes on the lack of integrity among mediapersons. In order to understand how exactly journalists really function it is necessary to understand the overall context in which they operate and clarify some of the persistent myths about what the profession is all about. Four myths in particular need to be dissected: That it enjoins...

The Supreme Court on Monday asked Attorney-General G.E. Vahanvati to produce in a sealed cover a copy of the complaint received against corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, which formed the basis for the Income-Tax Department to tap her telephonic conversations.A Bench comprising Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly said this to the A-G after perusing the Centre's counter-affidavit in the petition filed by industrialist Ratan Tata, alleging that the publication of...