The return of Drinking Water and Sanitation portfolio under Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh’s wing meant that he is now in charge of three departments which he could have distributed among the three Ministers of State under him. Instead of assigning departments to each one of them, Ramesh, on the other hand, tried to keep all his three MoSs — Sisir Adhikari, Pradeep Jain and Agatha Sangma — happy by...

-The Hindustan Times   Most of the applications filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act at various government departments bring disappointment instead of the desired information even though the authorities are slapped fines for violation of rules. Raman Sharma, who has filed 274 RTI queries before the Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda), pollution control board and other government agencies, said most of the time he has been discouraged by officials concerned. “They...

The communal violence bill prepared by the National Advisory Council (NAC) seeks fundamentally to change how the government deals with violence against minorities. The bill focuses on religious and linguistic minorities as well the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but religious minorities are at its heart. The bill has some undeniable strengths, but it suffers from two analytically fatal flaws. First, it places excessive faith in the state machinery. Though...

-The Telegraph   The finance and law ministries have locked horns over who will lead the battle against black money. A meeting of a finance ministry probe team under the chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has been put off indefinitely following a Supreme Court order to set up a special investigative team (SIT), headed by former apex court judge B.P. Jeevan Reddy, to probe illicit funds. While the panel...

In Uttar Pradesh's most impoverished region, Bundelkhand, government officials feed off not just the living but also the dead. Headlines Today has exposed how corrupt officials exploit the grieving families of farmers, who have committed suicide.   In a visit to Bundelkhand in 2008, AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi repeated a phrase borrowed from his father Rajiv Gandhi: "Out of 100 paise, only 15 paise reaches the poor".   While travelling through this dustbowl...