Freedom is important, so is responsibility. In countries like India, the media have a responsibility to fight backward ideas such as casteism and communalism, and help the people fight poverty and other social evils. Freedom of the press and journalistic ethics is an important topic today in India — with the word ‘press' encompassing the electronic media also. There should be a serious discussion on the topic. That discussion should include...

The current perception that cash transfers can replace public provision of basic goods and services and become a catch-all solution for poverty reduction is false. Where cash transfers have helped to reduce poverty, they have added to public provision, not replaced it. For crucial items like food, direct provision protects poor consumers from rising prices and is part of a broader strategy to ensure domestic supply. Problems like targeting errors...

“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.” This quote by US President Ronald Reagan summarises the significance attributed to facts, figures and data and the need to make them freely available across servers and bandwidths. In this age of internet and mobile networks, the amount of information available to us is far more than...

The Jan Lokpal is being vested with sweeping powers, which are susceptible to misuse. The centralised structure of the Lokpal will be ill-suited for sorting out governance deficit. People will be confined to being complainants and applicants. There is need to make the Jan Lokpal people-centric FOR many who quite rightly guessed that the Lokpal Bill drafted by the government would be a non-starter, the alternative merited automatic support. However, little...

The state government on Tuesday assured that it will examine the First Information Report filed for paying extremely low wages to MGNREGA workers in Gudliya village in Tonk district. The FIR had charged six village mates for paying just Re 1 as wages to about 99 workers. However, after protests by members of various organisations during the monthly meeting of NREGA, minister for rural development Bharat Singh assured that the department...