Social activist Anna Hazare said here on Monday that though the Prime Minister had a good character, the reason he failed to take action against the corrupt was because of ‘remote control'. “It is only because of the ‘remote control' that he cannot do anything. Otherwise he is such a good man,” Mr Hazare said during a press conference organised by ‘India Against Corruption' to gather support for the ‘Jan...

Why are the erstwhile RTI campaigners so alarmed five years after it became law? Why so many dharnas, rallies, conventions and hunger-strikes all over again? Part of the reason is that the silent revolution that the RTI has spawned needs to be defended from surreptitious alterations and manipulations, and partly because the RTI activists are being threatened, harassed and assaulted by the corrupt and the powerful, often with the connivance...

Hidden behind all the administrative scandals that rocked India in 2010, illegal mining is an unnoticed beast that has been eating into the country's soul.   While corruption in spectrum allocation and the conduct of the Commonwealth Games are primarily about monetary loot, illegal mining is about invaluable non-renewable natural resources.   In at least five major states, there were more than 20,000 complaints of illegal mining filed, but the perpetrators carried on with...

Nikhil Dey, convener of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information, has been in the forefront of the RTI movement. He speaks to  Bharat Dogra  about the achievements of the RTI and the challenges ahead: How do you assess the overall impact of the RTI? Sceptics say corruption is increasing more than even before. What I can assure them is corruption would have been much higher without the RTI. In schemes...

Uttar Pradesh may be ruled by a Dalit Chief Minister but poor Dalits in the state's rural areas continue to suffer under the oppression of upper caste politicians. One such case is that of a 50-year old dalit Budhai Ram of Sidhauli village in Sitapur district, 80 kilometres from Lucknow. Budhai Ram apparently made the mistake of filing a Right to Information petition at the office of the Sitapur district...