-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has made it very risky for any organisation to publish a survey on alleged corruption in lower judiciary. The court said on Tuesday that the law permitted one or many trial courts to make a reference to a high court to launch contempt proceedings against those responsible for the embarrassing findings. This ruling came in an 11-year-old case filed by transparency International India...

-The Hindu Electoral reforms announced in the Budget are not what they are claimed to be — they will neither cleanse our politics nor bring transparency Given his interest in cricket, this must be called Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s ‘doosra’. His announcement on electoral reforms in his Budget speech combined an element of surprise, some degree of deception and a sleight of hand — all that go into a doosra in cricket....

-The Times of India Going online was supposed to clean up and smoothen functioning of government schemes like the rural job guarantee scheme MGNREGS. But experience from Jharkhand's tribal districts shows that besides the chronic lack of connectivity, a brand new system of corruption has emerged. And, instead of more transparency, villagers with no knowledge of the electronic way of life are running blindly from pillar to post. Too many flip-flops...

-The Hindu Business Line Fails to ease distress caused by demonetisation’ New Delhi: Terming the Union Budget 2017-18, presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, as detrimental to the realisation of the welfare State, as enshrined in the Constitution, civil rights organisations said it “fails to respond to the present situation of distress and unemployment especially aggravated by demonetisation.” “The Budget seems to be perpetuating unemployment, hunger and malnutrition,” said a release by the...

-The Indian Express The enhancement of state powers without control or transparency is not being done against our wishes The clamour for security, accountability and transparency is leading to unfettered increase in the power of states. We are enacting law after law, introducing technology after technology, to render citizens transparent to the state. But at the same time, we are weakening protections and consenting to technologies in a way that makes the...