The lone Indian activist on the 2011 TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, Aruna Roy has been more successful than most,  when it comes to getting the government’s attention. The Chennai-born former bureaucrat who was an instrumental force behind the revolutionary Right to Information Act has also been credited by the government for “incorporating strong citizen entitlements” in the ambitious National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). A constant...

RTI activists and social workers are protesting the murder of a prominent RTI activist, Ram Vilas Singh, in Lakhisarai district last fortnight. They have demanded a high-level probe into the murder, which was very much apprehended, and arrest of the people who had been identified by Singh as threat to his life. "Singh was murdered in broad daylight on December 8 at his village Babhangawan even though he had informed the...

The Bihar directorate of economics and statistics (DES), a subsidiary wing of the state's planning and development department (PDD), is mulling over using the 'kinnar' community (eunuchs) as informants for timely feedback on birth of new children in families of any locality, so that their registration could be done within the stipulated time. The efficacy of eunuchs as effective informants was discussed at a state-level workshop on "Civil registration system" held...

Anna Hazare today appeared to betray an ambition to become the next Jaya Prakash Narayan if not a Mahatma Gandhi II, asking the Opposition to join his agitation if the UPA defeated the efforts to enact a strong Lokpal. He asked the Opposition to hit the streets and fill the jails, sounding a little like JP who had brought the Right and the Left together in his 1970s campaign against the...

Prakash Karat today came close to thanking Mamata Banerjee, not for defeating the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government but for thwarting the Manmohan Singh government. “Will be very happy if she hijacks our issue,” the CPM general secretary said in reply to a question whether Mamata had snatched the Left’s plank on foreign direct investment in retail. After the pat — presumably in jest — came the prod. “I think Trinamul should not be...