-The Telegraph   Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh today opposed sharing of certain “privileged” and “secret” matters under the right to information (RTI) law, echoing cabinet colleagues Salman Khurshid and M. Veerappa Moily. “Ministers write to the Prime Minister on a variety of issues. There has to be a concept of secrecy in government,” Ramesh said. According to Ramesh, communications leading to a cabinet decision or a policy decision of the government should be...

-The Economic Times   The government on Tuesday said it would confer constitutional status on the proposed Lokpal , embracing the idea mooted by Rahul Gandhi.  "We are working on a very strong Lokpal bill. A Lokpal bill that will come with a constitutional amendment . That amendment will give the Lokpal the status of a constitutional authority," law minister Salman Khurshid told PTI on Tuesday.  Khurshid, who gave Rahul the credit for the...

The Planning Commission’s poverty line affidavit has exposed how blissfully ignorant the glorified economists of the UPA are of the true reality of India The 2G spectrum scam, Commonwealth Games loot, cash-for-vote bribery, Lokpal fiasco, Pranab-Chidambaram duel on the Finance Ministry note, and the count goes on. It seems the UPA-II is stuck in a rut.  As if the battering by the united Opposition and hauling over the coals by civil...

People's activists want the Kudankulam nuclear power plant shut down completely; Tamil Nadu's politicians have the less ambitious aim of halting work on the project until the fears of local people are allayed. The plant was originally scheduled to begin operations later this month. The two groups submitted separate memoranda to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during their 40-minute meeting with him on Friday. Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Srikumar Banerjee, National Security...

There are fears that curative health care will be left to the private sector, while the public system will handle preventive and low-quality care. AN issue of The Lancet earlier this year highlighted some of the problems with public health in India, acknowledging that “it is in crisis”. The robust economic growth over the past 20 years has not translated into better health indices; indeed the decline of infant and child...