If you are seeking information about a creaking flyover or inflated electricity tariffs under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, what are the chances that your queries will be answered? That may well depend on whether the service or utility is provided by a public body or a public-private partnership (PPP). While the central information commission treats PPPs as public bodies that should come under the RTI; many have wriggled...
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Towards transparency in public procurement by Sandeep Verma
In her pre-Independence Day address, the President of India advocated the need for enhanced transparency and accountability in government, stressing the need for the adoption of rational and practical approaches in addressing these challenges. Her choice of qualifiers is significant, since the need for reform is especially being felt in government contracts, with recent government initiatives such as enacting a formal public procurement law for India, and for laying down...
More »Maval: Witnesses say cops shot detained farmer thrice by Sushant Kulkarni
Days after the death of 40-year-old Moreshwar Sathe in police firing during an agitation in Maval in Pune district against a pipeline project, two conflicting versions have emerged on not just how he was killed but also the number of bullets that had hit him. When The Indian Express visited Sathe’s village Shivane in Maval on Friday, eyewitnesses said he was shot at with a revolver by a police inspector after...
More »New twist to police firing incident near Pune
-The Hindu Adding a new twist to the farmers' protest in which three persons were killed on Tuesday near Pune, Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil told the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday that first there was private firing from an Indigo or Indica car and that person fled after injuring a local. The injured person filed a police complaint and pieces of the bullet were found and sent for examination, he...
More »‘Murdochisation' of the Indian media by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Alice Seabright
Its facets include concentration of media ownership and the transformation of news into a commodity. THE last two decades have witnessed a dramatic transformation of India's ‘mediascape' – a term first used by Arjun Appadurai, an academic of Indian origin based in the United States, to describe how visual imagery impacts the world and to describe and situate the role of the mass media in global cultural flows. While there...
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