Malaria is a mass killer, taking just under 800,000 lives a year. Most of them are babies and children under five. A significant number are pregnant women. It is an entirely preventable disease, caused by a parasite transmitted by mosquito bite, but the millions who live under its curse are too poor and have too few options to be able to avoid it. The malaria vaccine [ See: “Malaria vaccine partly...

-The Hindustan Times   At a time when it's reeling under allegations of scams and scandals, official documents show that the government gave the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) more immunity from the Right to Information (RTI) Act than what the agency had originally sought. The issue of how much immunity the CBI should get was bounced between several government departments, committees and officials that questioned the agency's demand of partial immunity, all...

In the brown smog that covers Manesar this late autumn, large trucks that pack half-a-dozen cars each into their containers queue on the broken highway from Delhi to Jaipur and park any which way they can. Their drivers loll in the teashops and dhabas. Few know when their containers will be loaded with Maruti Suzuki’s deliverables: cars named Swift and Dzire and A-Star and Sx4 that have been booked by tens...

-IANS   Even as the whole country seems gripped by Anna Hazare's crusade against corruption, one man who started it all in the 1990s, senior journalist Vineet Narain, is all but forgotten and the case itself has been refrigerated for good. Narain is still struggling with his unfinished agenda to seek justice in the hawala racket. The CBI chargesheet is still there, but the case has virtually been closed for want of political...

-The Times of India   Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), National Investigation Agency (NIA) and newly-formed NATGRID have joined the exclusive list of organizations that are exempted from sharing information under the RTI Act except for the matters pertaining to allegations of corruption and human rights violations. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had approved in June that these three organizations would be spared from sharing information under the second schedule of the RTI Act....