CHANDRAWAL, India—Satbir Sharma's wife is dead. His family lives in fear. His father's left leg is shattered, leaving him on crutches for life.   Sharma's only hope lies in a new law that gives him the right to know what is happening in the investigation of his wife's death. Most of all, he wants to know what will happen to the village mayor, now in jail on murder charges. He talks quietly, under...

-PTI   An attempt to use RTI to get details of Sonia Gandhi’s trips abroad, including that in August for surgery, came to nought as no government department appeared to have the information to share. Kailash Kanwar of Bhilwara, Rajasthan, filed an application under the RTI Act for details of foreign trips in the past two years by the chairperson of the UPA and the National Advisory Council. The application sent to the external...

-PTI   Government has spent nearly Rs 42 crore on Foreign Visits by Union Ministers during the last one year. The information provided in an RTI reply shows that while Cabinet Ministers spent Rs 37.16 crore on their Foreign Visits, their junior colleagues, Ministers of State, spent about Rs 4.76 crore on these visits bringing the total travel expenditure to Rs 41.82 crore for the year 2010-11. The Cabinet Secretariat has given these...

-Deccan Herald   The Central Information Commission (CIC) has pulled up the Prime Minister’s Office for ''casually handling'' a plea filed under the RTI Act that demanded details of the Foreign Visits undertaken by Sonia Gandhi as chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC). Chief Information Commissioner Satyanand Mishra expressed displeasure as the Prime Minister’s Office forwarded the RTI plea seeking information on the Congress president’s visits to foreign countries, first to the Ministry...

Policies aiming to combat malnutrition are ignoring an entire generation of women whose overall health has a direct bearing on children’s growth, say advocacy groups and researchers Cradling a frail son on her hip and with a plastic bag stuffed with clothes in one hand, Tara Jadam walked into the rehabilitation centre inside the district hospital here to spend the next two weeks. On a hot afternoon, she has walked several miles...