Alarmed with the rising number of pending RTI complaints, the State Information Commission is learnt to have apprised the state government of the increasing work pressure on Information Commissioners. The commission — where as many as 32,811 cases were pending at the end of March — has also suggested ways to lessen the burden of complaints. The government, in response, has shot a missive to various departments asking them to...

India lives in its villages, Gandhi said. But increasingly, the people of India are dying on its roads. India overtook China to top the world in road fatalities in 2006 and has continued to pull steadily ahead, despite a heavily agrarian population, fewer people than China and far fewer cars than many Western countries. While road deaths in many other big emerging markets have declined or stabilized in recent years,...

Governments of cotton growing states have spiked proposals by companies to increase prices for genetically modified (Bt) cotton seeds. Makers of Bt seed have asked for a rise in the price they could charge for a 40-seed packet of the BG1 variety to Rs 850 (from Rs 650 now) and for the BG2 variety to Rs 1,050 (up from Rs 750), as input and labour costs had gone up by 35...

The Indian press has expressed outrage at the sentences handed down to Union Carbide employees found guilty of negligence over the gas leak that killed thousands of people in Bhopal in 1984. One paper described the two-year sentences given to eight former Union Carbide Executives as "absurdly light punishment" and "a travesty of justice". Several accused successive Indian governments of kowtowing to US business interests in their failure to bring the...

India's recently announced Water Mission provides a rare opportunity for informed public debate to formulate a national water policy to unify the country in equitable use of the vital resource.  On May 28, 2010 the Prime Minster's Council on Climate Change, with Dr. Manmoan Singh being present, approved a water mission for India. This is an important event. The mission statement is an action plan catalysed by climate change response....