Aruna Roy, a Magsaysay award winner former bureaucrat, was closely involved in the drafting of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. As a member of the UPA's National Advisory Council (NAC), among other things, she has been conveying to the government the views of civil society on the proposed changes in the transparency act. On the sidelines of 3rd national convention of National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, held...

In letters to Prime Minister, he pitches for the project to continue and vouches for rehabilitation Digvijay urged Manmohan to get Environment Ministry to withdraw order suspending work He also said the State had made substantial progress in rehabilitation While he seldom misses an opportunity to attack the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government in Madhya Pradesh, documents recently accessed through the Right To Information Act show that the former Chief Minister and AICC...

Dozens of countries are taking part in a United Nations-sponsored effort to protect potentially life-saving centuries-old traditional medicines from bio-piracy by learning from India how to halt their misappropriation through international patents granted on non-original innovations. Representatives from more than 35 countries wrapped up a three-day meeting in New Delhi today that discussed emulating India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), a database documenting traditional medicinal treatment, concluding that such a mechanism...

Accord highest priority to inclusion of SCs and STs, says Council Ministry's methodology will result in some of the most vulnerable slipping through cracks: NAC Exclusion could prove politically disastrous to United Progressive Alliance The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council celebrated on Thursday its first major success, in its second avatar, in blocking the government's efforts to dilute the landmark Right To Information Act. But, if that was the good news, the bad news...

The National Advisory Council today won a victory over the government with Sonia Gandhi stressing the inclusion of eight “highly vulnerable” groups among the priority beneficiaries of the food security bill. Sources said the rural development ministry, headed by Vilasrao Deshmukh, had been resisting the panel’s recommendation for a new category of households that are “highly vulnerable to food insecurity”. The eight groups identified by Sonia are: “Particularly vulnerable” tribal groups; Mahadalits; Households headed by...