One of the great achievements of India is our free and vibrant press. This is an accomplishment of direct relevance to the working of democracy. Authoritarianism flourishes not only by stifling opposition, but also by systematically suppressing information. The survival and flowering of Indian democracy owes a great deal to the freedom and vigour of our press. There are so many occasions when, sitting even in Europe or in America,...

-PTI In a relief to Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy, a vigilance probe has found he had no role in the palmolein import corruption case in the early 1990s when he was Finance minister in the then UDF ministry headed by late Congress veteran K Karunakaran. In its report filed in a special court on Saturday, Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau (VACB) said its investigation did not come across any proof that suggested Chandy...

Neglected by conventional banks, low-income women in Satara have set one up themselves. Not long after Chetna Gala Sinha came to the drought-stricken region of Mhaswad in western Maharashtra to marry a farmer and prominent local social activist, she began putting her university degree in Finance into action. Local women, she observed, were wearing themselves out in subsistence livelihood such as growing grapes or selling vegetables. In 1992, Chetna, who grew up...

In a move that would usher in greater transparency, the Central Information Commission (CIC) ordered that legal opinion sought internally by the government can be made public.   The decision is also significant because it could compound the political problems of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which is impacted by a series of allegations of corruption, some of which have been revealed through filing of queries under Right to Information (RTI). The...

-Express News Service   Diversion of huge funds from tribal area sub-plan (TASP) provisions for implementation of projects in other areas has been opposed by the Opposition political parties. The issue was also raised several times by tribal legislators cutting across party lines in different sessions of the Assembly. The Comptroller and Audit General (CAG) has taken exception to large-scale diversion of funds from the TASP to other projects in its latest report...