In the five years of the Right to Information Act, activists who use it have faced reprisal across the country. OCTOBER 2010 marks the fifth anniversary of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The Act and its implementation have been described in both administrative circles and civil society as “revolutionary” , “a blow for transparency”, “a check on corrupt practices” and “a people's intervention tool with tremendous impact”. Social activists and...

A team of officials of the Food and Supplies Department from Fatehabad had to beat a hasty retreat when they went to Nadel village near Jakhal for “door-to-door checking” of some records of foodgrains supplied through the public distribution system (PDS). Villagers, who suspected that the officials had come to the village to tamper with the records, snatched ration cards from them when they were allegedly making some entries in the...

The implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 has created controversy in West Bengal. The gram sabha, the basic unit in the process of forest rights recognition, has been replaced by the gram sansad, denoting the village level constituency under the Panchayati raj system. This has been followed by contiguous arrangements as well as initiatives which are inconsistent with the Act....

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, now on a tour of the State's drought-hit areas, has said that the prime task before the government was to save whatever crop had been sown in the 11 districts where cultivation had been badly affected by the errant monsoon. Protecting livelihoods was also very important, he said. “Our first task now is to save whatever crop has already been cultivated by the farmers in...

Rural folk living on the outskirts of Kolkata have welcomed the various employment opportunities generated through financial aid by the Government social schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the Swarnajayanti Gram Sarojgar Yojana (SGSY). The villages here are witnessing a slow, but steady impact of various poverty alleviation schemes being implemented by Panchayats (village councils) and West Bengal's Rural Development Department. The formation of self-help groups (SHG) along...