WHILE maintaining her support for a Lokpal institution, Aruna Roy, a prominent civil rights activist and a member of the National Advisory Council, took a critical position in respect of the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by the activists of the India Against Corruption campaign. A recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2000, she heads the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (a trade union of workers and peasants)...

Aruna Roy, the prominent political and social activist who spearheaded the campaign to institute the Right to Information Act in the 1990s, is an ardent critic of the anti-people and exclusionary policies of the first and the second United Progressive Alliance governments. A recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2000, she heads the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana (a trade union of workers and peasants) in Rajasamand, Rajasthan,...

Reacting to the proposal by the government to amend the Right to Information (RTI) Act, over a 100 civil society activists and academics have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to abandon the “ill-advised move.” An amendment in this landmark legislation would be a “retrograde step” at a time when there was a popular consensus to strengthen it through rules and better implementation. The Act and its use...

Reacting to the proposal by the government to amend the Right to Information (RTI) Act, over a 100 civil society activists and academics have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to abandon the “ill-advised move.” An amendment in this landmark legislation would be a “retrograde step” at a time when there was a popular consensus to strengthen it through rules and better implementation. The Act and its use...

The right to information act (RTI) which is hailed as a great leap forward in the direction of transparency in governance is under serious threat. The UPA government that showcased the historical act as one of its achievements in the last Lok Sabha elections now seems to be bowing down to the system’s high and mighty by proposing amendments which seem designed to take the sting out of the people’s...