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...

-The Hindu   Among the many forms of gender inequality, perhaps the most insidious is the one related to the sex ratio. India ranks high among countries having an adverse sex ratio, with fewer women than men. The 2011 Census revealed a small improvement in the overall sex ratio, from 932.91 females for every 1000 males (in 2001) to 940.27, but a steep fall in ratio for the 0-6 age group, from...

IN preparing the approach paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan, the Planning Commission engaged “all interested persons” in the country in a wide, web-based consultative exercise and also involved a varied group of “stakeholders”. The resulting document clearly indicates some awareness of the complex problems likely to be faced by the economy in the coming period. But it falls short of expectations because it does not provide a cohesive...

-The Hindu Business Line About two-fifths are never born, one-fifth goes missing in infancy and childhood, and remaining two-fifths do so between the ages 15 and 59 There are close to 4 million “missing” poor women in developing countries each year, says a new World Bank report. India accounts for one million of these women. Expressing deep concern at excess female mortality or “missing” females, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and...

Amid policy battles over food production, energy resources and economic decline, one untapped natural resource that is guaranteed to boost production on a global scale has been stubbornly overlooked – the power of women in the labour force. According to the World Bank's 2012 World Development Report (WDR) "Gender Equality and Development", ensuring equal access for women farmers would increase maize yields by 11 to 16 percent in Malawi and 17...