-The Hindustan Times Indian high courts were supposed to deliver justice in Right To Information (RTI) cases. But, they have themselves enforced rules that make implementation of the transparency law --- RTI Act --- difficult.     A study done by a government institute ---- Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration --- aimed at evaluating efficacy and reasonableness of rules prescribed under RTI Act finds that many high courts have prescribed rules to...

The ASCI report says there is ample evidence of “market dominance” in specific media markets, but the government has ignored the report for three years. A ministry official tells PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA that it is unlikely to be implemented. A report prepared by an independent institution recommending imposition of cross-media ownership restrictions recently entered the public domain nearly three years after it was submitted,  following a rebuke to the government by...

-The Hindu The Rajasthan State Commission for Protection of Child Rights is developing a protocol for elimination of child labour with its contents devoted to various aspects of child trafficking, children being forced into hazardous occupations and rehabilitation of rescued child labourers. Panel chairperson Deepak Kalra said at a workshop on child labour here on Monday that the protocol would be submitted to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot with request for urgent action...

-The Economic Times Kulvinder Gill, professor of breeding and genetics at the Washington State University in the US, describes himself as a dreamer and an optimist. One of his dreams is to make sure food production does not decline over the next few decades, when increasing temperatures act on the yields of major crops. Specifically, he is beginning a project with six other organisations in India to make wheat less sensitive to...

-The Hindu The petition against the Ambedkar-Nehru cartoon, published in The Hindu (“Humour is by no means exempt from prejudice”, June 8, 2012), makes for sad reading. Sad, because it bears the signatures of some of our best scholars, universally admired for their rigorous scholarship, who nevertheless chose to sign a petition short on facts. The petition asks the NCERT's Textbooks Review Committee to “reconsider the Ambedkar cartoon (and possibly other such...