Asking questions can cost your life in India - even if the right to solicit information is protected by law. Amar Nath Deo Pandey is luckier - in less than a week, he appears to have escaped two attempts on his life in a nondescript town in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. More than five years after the introduction of a landmark law that allows Indians to access information held by...
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Binayak Sen acquittal in waging war case challenged by Supriya Sharma
The Chhattisgarh government is not content with a life term for Binayak Sen for sedition. It wants the rights activist to be convicted for conspiring to wage war against the state. In a criminal appeal filed in the high court, the state has challenged a Raipur sessions court's acquittal of Sen and two others under Section 121 A of the IPC, which deals with hatching conspiracy to wage war or...
More »Keep CBI out of RTI: Solicitor General by Nagendar Sharma
The CBI should be taken out of the purview of the Right to Information Act (RTI) to block information requests that could put lives of investigators at risk, solicitor general, Gopal Subramanium has advised the government. Subramanium has recommended that the CBI be exempted in light of the "complex and dangerous situations in which the Central Bureau of Investigation has to work". "Its officers need to be protected from dangers which...
More »Tackling the blight of misgovernance by Minhaz Merchant
Global business abhors uncertainty. The ministerial-level corruption in UPA-II has slowed FDI and FII inflows. The stock market, despite double-digit corporate profit and 8.6% GDP growth, reflects the anxiety of Indian and foreign investors. To take India's growth story forward in the 20th year of economic reforms, political reforms must catch up. Misgovernance won't do in a globalised, interconnected world. Two kinds of political corruption blight India: episodical and ongoing. Episodical...
More »Channels of change by Richard Mahapatra
Two villages in Uttar Pradesh have reversed the trend of migration by digging six kilometres of channels to bring water to drought-hit farms Call it the fallout of seven years of severe drought or government inaction, a silent revolution is brewing in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Communities are getting united and digging channels to bring water from government canals to their fields. Some are volunteering labour, while those belonging to...
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