-Hindustan Times Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday is addressing a convention on the 10th-anniversary celebrations of the Right to Information (RTI) Act which was brought in ‘to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority’. As the act completes a decade of existence, here is how (and why) it changed the way the government and public servants function: 1. What is RTI? A law that empowers every citizen to seek...
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Suicides mirror drought-hit Odisha’s growing farm crisis -Priya Ranjan Sahu
-Hindustan Times Bhubaneswar: Debt and drought have reportedly forced five Odisha farmers to commit suicide in as many days, prompting the human rights commission on Tuesday to take note of the state’s deepening farm crisis. The farmers — all of them in their 40s — allegedly took the drastic step after their paddy crop wilted because of scanty rainfall and they have loans to repay. In another case, it was cotton. At least...
More »Our RTI Experiences: 10 Years On, A Flawed Process Mars Powerful Act -Ujjainee Sharma and Trishna Senapaty
-The Huffington Post The Right to Information Act 2005 has opened up a space where people are able to ask questions of their government and bring the focus on cases of serious lapses in governance. Back in 2010 when we filed our RTI one had to go to the concerned department, find the Public Information officer (PIO) and then complete the necessary paperwork with them. At that time, we remember waiting around...
More »Farmers in Odisha’s Bargarh swear by traditional methods -Priya Ranjan Sahu
-Hindustan Times A migrant labourer not long ago, 37-year-old Sitaram Majhi is now a successful farmer. As Odisha’s agricultural fields starve for water due to drought conditions this year, Majhi never had a problem watering his crop in Kharamal village in Bargarh district’s parched Paikmal block, more than 500 km from Bhubaneswar. Equipped with chahala – a small traditional water harvesting structure – and a vermi-compost pit the three-acre farm, on which he...
More »Why Skymet went wrong -Jatim Singh
-The Indian Express Congratulations to the IMD which sounded out the country on below-normal rainfall at 93 per cent of the LPA and then downgraded it to 88 per cent. Skymet’s forecast for 102 per cent of the long period average (LPA) of the southwest monsoon was wrong. On September 30, the monsoon ended at 86 per cent of the LPA, leading to a second consecutive season with deficient rainfall (mild...
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