They operate from a cramped floor in a commercial building near Bhikaji Cama Place in Delhi, and work on a heavy roster of hearings day in and day out. However, the five posts of information commissioners in the Central Information Commission have drawn applications from all categories of people — from scientists, lawyers and journalists to, most of all, retired or soon-to-be retired bureaucrats.   Despite the heavy workload and its low-profile...

The recent toxic liquor tragedy killing 33 persons in Cuttack and Khurda districts has brought to the spotlight at least eight types of medicines being misused by addicts in various parts of the state. The latest deaths occurred due to methyl alcohol in Epee-Carm Carminative and concentrated Cinnamon water. That may be a routine misuse going horribly wrong, because ethyl alcohol got replaced by methyl alcohol and the latter is poisonous. Doctors...

-The Times of India   Education minister Brij Kishor Sharma said that the Right to Education Act will be strictly implemented in the state in order to improve quality of education. However, he said that dialogues are open with private and public schools to maintain their structural set-up. The minister came to Ajmer on Thursday to participate in the convocation of Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education held at Jawahar Rang Manch. Overall, 205...

The worst fears of the Madhya Pradesh unit of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), have come true with regard to the high per unit cost of power to be produced by the controversial privately-owned Maheshwar hydro project in Madhya Pradesh: Information revealed through an RTI application shows that the private company developing the dam has projected the average cost of electricity to be produced at a whopping Rs. 10 per...

Central pension plan NPS finally gets a boost The ‘New’ NPS     Measure: Improve incentives for distributors. Has been recently implemented.     Impact: Was required. But won’t be enough, need consumer education to build volumes.     Proposal: Increase fund management fees with an option to lower later.     Impact: Under consideration. But finance ministry unhappy with increase in costs.     Proposal: Relax the norms to appoint more fund managers to increase distribution.     Impact: Unlikely. At...