The method of selection of Information Commissioners cries out for reform. FOR the Right to Information (RTI) Act to be successful, it is not enough if it has provisions that encourage information-sharing and punish those Information Officers who deny requests for information on specious grounds. Activists have found that while deciding appeal cases the degree of commitment of Information Commissioners to the Act's objectives matters more than the supportive provisions of...

With the highest child malnutrition rate in the world, Madhya Pradesh needs to revise its food system if things are to be changed for the better. Officially, more than 56 per cent of ration cards are fake in the state, believed to have been issued by low-rank officials to cultivate benefits. The state food and civil supplies department is looking at institutions like GAIN, a Swiss foundation created at a special session...

Officially, more than 56 per cent of ration cards are fake in the state, believed to have been issued by low-rank officials to cultivate benefits. The state food and civil supplies department is looking at institutions like GAIN, a Swiss foundation created at a special session of United Nations General Assembly on Children in 2002, to ensure the supply of nutritious foods to the locals. As a solution to bribery at...

The 2010 Seeds Bill that has been introduced in Parliament does address some of the major concerns in the aborted 2004 version, but strangely a number of important correctives – on regulation, consistency and punishment – that had been incorporated in the 2008 version (which lapsed in 2009) have now been modified or dropped altogether. What forces are pushing the government to act against the interests of India’s farmers? The third...

Independent India's greatest failing must be its inability to feed its people. With 42 per cent of all children malnourished, 56 per cent of women anaemic, and the country ranked 65th out of 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, the report card of the state on nutrition must have an F. Most disturbing is the fact that things have got worse over time. In the first half of the...