-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The government is all set to notify a new set of Right to Information rules that will allow appeals to be withdrawn and, according to activists, put the lives of whistleblowers in danger. The government is all set to notify a new set of Right to Information (RTI) rules that will allow appeals to be withdrawn and, according to activists, put the lives of whistleblowers in danger. The Central...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-The Indian Express Baigas in court against order issued by govt of undivided MP Achanakmar: “THAK GAYI (I am tired),” says Ranichand Baiga, 26. She was married at 15, and in a tribe where non-surgical contraceptives are still unheard of, has since had eight children. Two, she says, died of illness. On her arm, outside her one-room home in the core zone of the Achanakmar Tiger Reserve, is her youngest son, Surya,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Accused of diluting the RTI Act and weakening the architecture of accountability, the Narendra Modi government has gone into overdrive to dispute the allegation that comes at a time it is already under attack for injecting further opacity into political funding. Some erroneous media reports on the proposed RTI Rules, 2017 - circulated by the department of personnel and training (DoPT) on March 31 and open for consultations...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A clutch of legal amendments the Narendra Modi government has introduced to allow corporate political donors to mask their contributions drags the world's largest democracy against global currents of rising transparency in electoral funding, analysts and activists have warned. From Brazil to Bangladesh, and Croatia to Cyprus, countries of diverse sizes and varied histories with democracy have over the past decade adopted laws and rules aimed at making...