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...

In the five years of the Right to Information Act, activists who use it have faced reprisal across the country. OCTOBER 2010 marks the fifth anniversary of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The Act and its implementation have been described in both administrative circles and civil society as “revolutionary” , “a blow for transparency”, “a check on corrupt practices” and “a people's intervention tool with tremendous impact”. Social activists and...

In Maharashtra, attacks on citizen-activists have increased with the greater use of RTI; four activists have been killed in the last seven months IN the late 1970s, a woman named Shobha Shirodkar was the victim of a hit-and-run in Mumbai. It was no accident. It was a case of murder because Shobha, who was the principal of a prestigious school in the city, had opposed the land mafia and was believed...

BJP may have stalled proceedings in both Houses of parliament on Monday over the firing in Aligarh in which four people were killed. But the lesser talked-about fact of the matter is that the original notification for the Taj Expressway was issued in April 2001 when BJP’s Rajnath Singh was the Uttar Pradesh (UP) chief minister. The expressway, which Mayawati re-christened as Yamuna Expressway, is at the crux of the ongoing clash...

The Women's Commission in the Indian state of West Bengal has announced an inquiry into allegations that a tribal woman was forced to parade naked. Officials say she was forced to walk without her clothes for nearly 10km (6 miles) through three villages and was filmed on a mobile phone. They say that she was also molested and jeered by a large crowd. Locals say she was being "punished" because of an illicit...