Using India’s populist Right to Information process gives citizens about as good a chance of receiving basic services as paying a bribe does, providing a new, and surprising weapon in the war against corruption. Two doctoral candidates in political science at Yale University recruited slum dwellers in Delhi and asked them to apply for a “ration card,” which allows people living below the poverty line to buy food at subsidized prices....

Simmering differences between civil society members and government representatives spilled over on Monday after an attempt was made to bring the prime minister and the higher judiciary under the purview of the Lokpal Bill. In its fifth meeting on Monday, while government representatives—including senior Union ministers Pranab Mukherjee, Kapil Sibal, M.Veerappa Moily, P. Chidambaram and Salman Khursheed—expressed their reservations, civil society members said their demand was “non-negotiable” and threatened another agitation. While...

It was a warm summer’s morning last week in teeming old Faridabad, a chaotic, industrial town where nearly half the people live in slums. Praveen Kumar was talking to students at a government girls’ senior secondary school. They complained about the broken fans, and they told him how there was just one sweeper to clean the stinky toilet. A lean, graying man with a receding hairline and neatly trimmed moustache, 51-year-old...

Activists against graft have often pointed out that even the threat of jail hardly serves as a deterrent for a corrupt person, as he can enjoy his ill-gotten gains after he completes his sentence. Now, that could be set to change. Assets amassed through corrupt means by a public servant will be frozen during investigation and liquidated on his being proved guilty, if the proposed Lokpal bill comes through. The drafting...

Sharp differences between Government representatives and civil society members in the Lokpal drafting committee came to the fore over basic issues such as the structural set-up of Lokpal, maximum punishment for corruption and graded punishment for culprits, during the fourth meeting of the panel here on Monday. However, Union Minister and panel member Kapil Sibal said that there was consensus on "almost half of the" 40 points brought to the table...