-The Hindustan Times   Female foeticide, infanticide and human trafficking make India the world's 4th most dangerous country for women, with Afghanistan's violence and poverty taking it to the top spot, followed by Congo due to horrific levels of rape, a Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll said on Wednesday. Pakistan and Somalia ranked third and fifth, respectively, in the global survey of perceptions of threats ranging from domestic abuse and economic discrimination...

Civil society” has dominated popular discussion for the last few months. It may be hard to recall how rare the use of the term was only some years back. In 2002, when I published a book analysing the role of civil society in preventing, dampening or inciting communal riots, I was asked in a television interview whether I was overstating the power of civil society vis-à-vis the state. And in...

Sonia Gandhi has told the Congress it is the party’s duty to ensure that all welfare schemes introduced by the government are “fully implemented” on the ground. In a letter published in the latest issue of party mouthpiece Congress Sandesh, Sonia wrote: “The UPA has worked hard to fulfil the strong mandate to govern it received from the people in 2009. Since then, the synergy between the government and the party...

In a decision which might irk RTI activists, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been exempted from giving information under Right to Information Act. The decision was taken by the Cabinet on Thursday following repeated requests by the agency on the grounds that it probed sensitive cases, and in doing so, it "becomes difficult for it to share information and also in accessing the information'. The Cabinet took note of CBI's...

  In a decision that is certain to generate a lot of heat, the Manmohan Singh government has exempted the CBI, the country's premier investigating agency, from providing information under the Right to Information Act . A notification to this effect was issued by the government on Thursday after the proposal got the Union Cabinet's green signal, placing the agency among a select category of institutions that have been kept outside...