-Live Mint To maintain his constant stream of RTI petitions, Agrawal says he gets ideas from day-to-day observations, news reports, government insiders, whistle-blowers and journalists. In the summer of 1985, a cloth merchant in Chandni Chowk, the crowded market in the old quarters of Delhi, received a call in response to a letter he had written to the papers asking why his favourite weekly television serial, Rajani, could not be aired daily...

-The Hindustan Times Culture and tradition have always been cited as the bedrocks on which our superior family values are founded. But like so many elevating qualities that we feel we are endowed with, this too is largely a myth. A recent survey by Child Rights and You found that one-third of Delhi feels that children should work as hard as adults and that they should be paid less. The invisibility...

-The Economic Times Decks have been cleared for reintroduction of the Companies Bill, 2011, in the monsoon session. If the bill is passed after endorsing all the suggestions made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, corporate social responsibility (CSR) would, for the first time in the world, become mandatory.  The report recommends that companies with net worth above Rs 500 crore, or an annual turnover of over Rs 1,000 crore, earmark...

-PTI Amid differences among allies, the government on Thursday deferred a decision on the changes in the crucial Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill, 2011. "It (the PFRDA Bill) was taken up and deferred", said a minister after the Cabinet meeting here. Among the UPA allies, Trinamool Congress has been quite vociferous in opposing the pension and insurance reforms. Railway minister Mukul Roy, who represents TMC in the UPA government, did not speak...

The Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), in its report on reforms in the intelligence setup, has recommended bringing all agencies under Parliamentary scrutiny, while suggesting that a single authority be put in charge of all agencies, civil and military. In its report — A Case for Intelligence Reforms in India — the IDSA, an autonomous body funded by the Ministry of Defence, has advocated providing these agencies a legal...