-Down to Earth Gaps in data on women and girls particularly severe; countries do not invest enough in public intent data systems, the report said Most countries have shied away from an open-data policy — more so countries with developing economies, according to a recent World Bank report. Only 11 per cent low-income countries consistently made available with a license classifiable as ’open’, the report flagged. The comparable rate for lower-middle-income countries was...

The World Economic Outlook – a bi-annual publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- released in October 2020 has anticipated that the economic progress made by the countries since the 1990s to reduce poverty would be turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, economic disparity would rise too in the post-COVID world because the crisis has disproportionately impacted women, informal sector workers and people with...

-Frontline.in Interview with Nikhil Dey, rights activist and founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, on 15 years of the Right to Information Act. India’s Right to Information (RTI) Act, which was promulgated in 2005, is considered one of the most advanced and powerful pieces of rights legislation in the world. Although an evolved law that forces governments to become more transparent and accountable, almost every regime has shown reluctance to uphold...

-Livemint.com A failure to protect incomes could widen the gap between have-nots and haves and thus hurt growth When the facts change, I change my mind," John Maynard Keynes is believed to have said almost a century ago. Responding to the economic after-shocks of the covid pandemic, governments and central banks have been living by this maxim. In the UK and US, supposedly fiscally conservative governments have spent with abandon to prop...

-Newsclick.in One of the best transparency laws promulgated by Parliament is now threatened by judicial decisions and interpretations which are not in consonance with the law and would weaken it. If more importance is given to exemptions and widening the Act’s scope, it would be a sad regression for democracy, writes former Central Information Commissioner SHAILESH GANDHI. The Supreme Court of India has consistently held from 1975 to 2005 that the Right...