Pratyush Sinha retired as India’s central vigilance commissioner on Monday. During his tenure Sinha, a 1969 Bihar cadre IAS officer, conducted several high-profile investigations such as the ones into the allocation of 2G mobile phone spectrum and preparations for the Commonwealth Games (CWG), among others. In an interview conducted in mid-August, Sinha spoke about issues ranging from the whistle-blower’s Act to the collapse of governance. Edited excerpts: What are the...

We need to make sure nutrition is not easily neglected. And that means putting pressure on leaders throughout society to focus on nutrition. I have just finished a trip to India to help contribute to the efforts on ending malnutrition. The politicians and media were talking about the sparkling new economic growth and development figures. There was no such attention given to the “other” growth and development figures — those related...

The ubiquitousness of the mobile phone in urban areas and its spread in rural areas in India seem to have fed a notion — not substantiated by hard evidence — that there is a wide and deep market for such services in the countryside. Such a notion has remained largely unverified because of the scarcity of data on the extent of ownership of assets and access to services such as...

The method of selection of Information Commissioners cries out for reform. FOR the Right to Information (RTI) Act to be successful, it is not enough if it has provisions that encourage information-sharing and punish those Information Officers who deny requests for information on specious grounds. Activists have found that while deciding appeal cases the degree of commitment of Information Commissioners to the Act's objectives matters more than the supportive provisions of...

The RTI application spilled out mind-boggling inconsistencies “THIS is our NREGS [National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme] farm pond [water harvesting structure],” says 24-year-old Dhanpati with a flourish. Puzzled by his rhetorical declaration, I ask him: “Where is it?” “It is this. You are standing on it,” he says with a wry smile. The farm pond, one of the agricultural revival measures planned by the Central government under the scheme, has not been dug at...