India’s first film on the Right to Information is out. Ek Cup Chay (A cup of tea) was screened at the 40th International Film Festival of India here to thunderous response from the audiences. Speaking to The Hindu, directors Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar said: “It is the first film on RTI in any language in the country. We wanted to create awareness of the law among people.” “The decisions...

The Assembly elections saw the culture of “coverage packages” explode across Maharashtra. In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for almost any coverage at all.  C. Ram Pandit can now resume his weekly column. Dr. Pandit (name changed) had long been writing for a well-known Indian language newspaper in Maharashtra. On the last day for the withdrawal of nominations to the recent State Assembly elections, he found himself...

KOCHI: In a rare move, the Union government has launched an ‘Appeal to the People of Kerala’ advertisement campaign to counter the ‘false Propaganda’ against the Indo-ASEAN free trade agreement (FTA). Rarely does the Centre come out with such State-specific advertisement campaigns to counter resistance to its policy, it is pointed out. The half-page ads in the newspapers, issued in ‘public interest’ by the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry, is...

‘No mechanism to protect the poor’ IN a period characterised by all-round price rise, the issue of food security assumes extreme significance, especially for the rural and urban poor. At a time when the need for a universal public distribution system is increasingly felt, the government’s categorisation of a very small percentage of the people as being below the poverty line and eligible for rations has invited a lot of...