With the government serving a severe blow to transparency in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects worth one trillion rupees the Central Information Commission has decided to seek Prime Minister’s Manmohan Singh’s intervention. “We will be writing to the Prime Minister that there should not be a blanket ban on making RTI applicable to PPP projects,” said an Information Commissioner, following a decision at the commission’s last meeting. The CIC wanted the...

A strong Lokpal Bill is necessary to fight corruption, but it cannot become a “supreme body” above Parliament with control over the legislature, executive and judiciary, Sudhakar Reddy, deputy general secretary of the national council of the Communist Party of India (CPI), has said. Speaking at the launch of the anti-corruption CAMPAign by the Left parties here on Saturday, Mr. Sudhakar Reddy said that participation of civil society organisations could not...

Anna Hazare's CAMPAign against corruption has a curious side-effect. It has turned the spotlight on India's lack of pre-legislative transparency. We may accept or dismiss team Anna's Jan Lokpal draft but his movement — and the subsequent build-up of hope and betrayal — has unwittingly exposed the systemic opaqueness in which our laws are conceived, written, debated and passed. The Lokpal Bill 2011 is one among 67-odd bills listed as...

-The Telegraph   The Supreme Court has criticised those who raise “the bogey of judicial activism or overreach” every time the courts try to enforce welfare laws. A two-judge bench said the courts do not exceed their jurisdiction by hearing public interest litigations filed by NGOs and social activists on behalf of the poor and illiterate. Rather, by doing so, the courts fulfil a mandate laid down in the Constitution’s chapter on...

-The Indian Express   Aimed at reducing maternal and child mortality, the Janani Suraksha Yojana is a scheme unflinching in its ambition and creativeness. Launched more than five years ago, it supplements incentives like free transport with conditional cash transfer to encourage “institutional delivery”. In the years since, the data has been encouraging, but regional variations are evident — as are, unfortunately, indications that the poorest women may not necessarily be...