It came as no big surprise to anyone at all that US President Barack Obama made a speech filled with noble intentions, but very little concrete action, on the issue of climate change at the Climate Change Summit, which just concluded in New York. Environment activist had great hopes that the US President would think "out of the box" and take the lead in ensuring that the US, one of...

The spectre of inflation has returned to haunt India. It is not even six months since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government returned to power but its inability to control food prices is arguably its single biggest failure till now. The inflation rate will eventually come down sometime in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future and the government will surely take credit for bringing prices down as and when that happens. But...

RTI advocators in Bihar have succeeded in prevailing upon the State Information Commission to impose penalties under The Right to Information Act (RTI Act) on two senior officers of the Madhubani  district administration. On 11th September, 2009 the Bihar Information Commission imposed the maximum penalty permissible under the RTI Act on the Additional District Collector (Apar-Samaharta) and the Circle Officer (Anchal Adhikari) for repeated contraventions of the RTI Act. The Commission...

INDIA’S achievement in setting up a huge structure of local self-government institutions has won worldwide recognition and respect. However, the massive numbers of rural self-government or panchayat raj representatives should not be allowed to obscure the reality of some very important weaknesses in our panchayat raj institutions. True, some states have notable achievements to their credit in this respect, but taking an overview of the national situation it can be...

The CVC has failed to be an institutional bulwark against corruption. The reason? Wrong appointments. It's time to fix the methodology of these appointments and make them transparent. The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) was set up as a department of the government of India in the 1960s. It was functioning as an organization to advise government on all matters relating to corruption in public services and lack of integrity vis-à-vis public...