As late as 2008, about 23 years after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the state government was still involved in virtual subterfuge. Taking advantage of a curfew imposed in Indore, which was reeling under communal riots in July-August that year, the government smuggled out 40 tonnes of toxic waste from the Union Carbide factory to an incinerator 230 km away at a site in Pithampur. Apologising for the government's action, Union...

The planned National Food Security Act represents a unique opportunity to achieve gains with respect to the public distribution system. However, the current draft is a non-starter. When I first visited Surguja district in Chhattisgarh nearly 10 years ago, it was one of those areas where the Public Distribution System (PDS) was virtually non-functional. I felt constrained to write, at that time, that “the whole system looks like it has been...

India has possibly the largest number of active non-government, not-for-profit organizations in the world. A recent study commissioned by the government put the number of such entities, accounted for till 2009, at 3.3 million. That is one NGO for less than 400 Indians, and many times the number of primary schools and primary health centres in India. Even this staggering number may be less than the actual number of NGOs active...

A law empowering Indians to seek information from government to promote accountability and transparency has brought change to urban India, but has largely left out the country's rural poor, social activists say. The Right to Information (RTI) Act - similar to the Freedom of Information Act in the United States - was enacted almost five years ago and is aimed at providing a practical way for all citizens to access...

The Lokayukta is the “government’s conscience”, an anti-corruption ombudsman organised at the state-level and born out of a need felt among the country’s statesmen to instill a sense of public confidence in the transparency of the administrative machinery. Legal experts say that the “best and the worst” of the Lokayukta organisation is that the success of the entire mechanism depends solely on the “personal qualities such as the image, caliber, drive,...