-The Hindu Any move to amend the RTI Act must involve public consultation The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)government has struck another blow against transparency and accountability. Its already negative track record — that has been marked by an unwillingness to operationalise the Lok Pal, the Whistleblowers Act and the Grievance Redress law — has taken another step backwards if one is to go by a single line in item 14 in the...
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Unjustified murders by cops: Tuticorin report -Shanmughasundarm J
-The Times of India CHENNAI: A 23-members fact-finding team investigating the Tuticorin violence on May 22 and 23, where several people were killed in police firing, has submitted a report calling it a “total breakdown of civilian authority.” Putting the death toll at 15 as opposed to the earlier 13, the 260-page report called it “unjustified and unwanted” murders. “The Tuticorin police continue the terror regime and people are not allowed to...
More »A long march of the dispossessed to Delhi -P Sainath
-RuralIndiaOnline.org Imagine a democratic protest where a million farmers, labourers and others march to the capital and compel discussion of the exploding crisis of the countryside in a special three-week session of Parliament India’s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian. It’s a crisis of society. Maybe even a civilizational crisis, with perhaps the largest body of small farmers and labourers on earth fighting to save their livelihoods. The agrarian crisis is no...
More »Bureaucrats More Wary of 'How' Than 'Why' of Lateral Entry Into Civil Services -Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta
-TheWire.in Veteran IAS officers agree there is a need for greater specialisation in the civil services, but are unhappy with the cut in recruitments over the years and the move to bypass the UPSC system. New Delhi: The Centre’s move to allow lateral entry into empanelled bureaucracy has opened up a complex debate that has been ongoing for, at least, the last two decades. While a big chunk of the civil servants...
More »Aruna Roy, social activist and Magsaysay Award winner, interviewed by G Sampath
-The Hindu The social activist whose new book on the RTI is just out, worries about the doublespeak in politics today, where rhetoric and substance never match The past couple of months have been hectic for Aruna Roy. The social activist and Magsaysay Award winner has been travelling across the country to promote her book, The RTI Story: Power to the People, which came out in April. After waiting more than a...
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