As the Right to Information Act (RTI) celebrated the sixth year of its coming, there has been much heated discussion, often emotional, of the benefits that it has brought and also the challenges with which it has confronted government. This debate came to a head with the prime minister’s inaugural address to the Annual Convention of the Central Information Commission on October 14. It is accepted in all circles that the...

The Smart Card Project is helping nearly 12.7 million poor people in Andhra Pradesh to get timely payment of wages It was conceived as a vehicle to promote financial inclusion by taking banking services to the unbanked poor, harnessing information and communications technology to ensure the benefits of public welfare programmes reach those they are intended for by plugging leakages. The Andhra Pradesh Smart Card Project, launched in 2007, is...

The underlying assumption of the proposed Land Acquisition Bill seems that the price paid to farmers is unreasonably low due to dominant power of industrial buyers, requiring government intervention. The draft, however, may neither accelerate the pace of land acquisition for industry nor overcome the psychological barriers of landowners that impede land transfers. First, the psychological barriers that limit supply. One of the main reasons for the farmers’ (and land dependents’)...

Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi sold off his business in 2003 to do something relevant. The Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai alumnus soon became a prolific user of the Right To Information Act and filed more than 800 RTI applications. He was appointed the Information Commissioner at the Central Information Commission, New Delhi, in 2008. In this freewheeling interview with rediff.com's Priyanka, Gandhi says that appellants must understand that law describes 'information' as something...

Five years into the implementation of the right to work programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has the potential to create even sharper division between states than what existed before it was launched. This is becoming increasingly clear through reports like the second report of the National Consortium of Civil Society Organisations on NREGA, released last week in Delhi by rural development minister Jairam Ramesh. It is...