In the long speeches made at the opening ceremony of the CW games, every important individual, department or institution that made a contribution, was acknowledged. Did anyone hear a word about the workers who made these world-class games possible? Maybe it was just a slip or maybe it was not considered necessary. Anyway, the workers were not there for the speeches, having been driven out of the capital just a...

Video Volunteers, a Goa based chapter of an international community media portal is inviting application for its India Unheard program. It is the second round of program under which selected candidates would be trained to make video reports from their area focusing issues, concerns, actions, innovations, traditions etc related to communities. It’s a one year old endeavor to provide fellowship for citizen journalism.      The Fellowship is open for Hindi speaking...

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, since 2003, one Indian farmer has committed suicide every 30 minutes. In 2008, 16,196 farmers took their own lives, bringing the total number of farmer suicides in India between 1997 and 2008 to 199,132. (Significantly, P. Sainath is of the opinion that like all government data, these figures too are unreliable. For when women farmhands kill themselves, their deaths are not enlisted as...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which has revitalised the rural landscape across the country, stands diminished in the land of its birth, Rajasthan, hijacked and held to ransom by vested interests and stripped of its backbone of an open social audit. As the Andhra experience has shown, there is one ingredient that can bring back its vitality: institutionalising citizen audits. But, is the Rajasthan government up to...

AN Tiwari may have taken the oath of office to succeed Wajahat Habibullah as the next chief information commissioner. However, this has agitated information activists. On their blogs, they have slammed the government for executing the appointment while the nation was distracted by the Ayodhya verdict. Blogs and group mails dedicated to the Right to Information (RTI) like Humjanenge and rti4empowerment have seen comments from activists across India. “This is certainly not...