The Conflict of Interest Bill introduced in the Rajya Sabha is a welcome step to control the grey areas in which “public private partnerships” are conducted. AMONG the many things that have proliferated in the economic boom of the brash new India is conflict of interest. So widespread, comprehensive and many-tentacled has this feature become that it is often no longer even recognised to exist, much less to be a...

Joseph Munyi, a Kenyan citizen, has been living with HIV for 8 years and, much like other HIV patients, is unemployed. He has been receiving his medication free of charge on account of government programmes and outreach programmes of Medicine Sans Frontieres. His medication comes in the form of generic drugs. However, this situation may not last long as economic interests of few may end up impeding many a public spirited...

-The Times of India The Madras high court on Thursday refused to interfere with the recent increase of petrol prices, and also observed that the last week's crippling petrol and diesel shortage in Tamil Nadu had been overcome due to state government's efforts. A vacation bench of the court comprising Justice K Venkataraman and Justice C S Karnan passed the order on Thursday, while dismissing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by...

Political parties across the spectrum get into a tangle over an innocuous cartoon in a school textbook THE textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) are in the news again. This time, it is not history but political science textbooks that managed to get almost all Members of Parliament on their feet on an emotive issue and for reasons that defied logic. One day before the 60th...

SURAT: His questions in RTI applications may irritate any government officer. Yet the officials nonetheless read the applications filed by RTI activist Kanu Shah, 75, with lot of interest and enthusiasm. "Normally, the applications are filed in a plain paper and have a simple format. However, Shah adds flavour to them. He uses colours, logos and scanned images to make them look beautiful," said Nagin Halpati, public information officer, District Education...