The mystery behind the murder of RTI activist Shehla Masood is deepening by the day. CNN-IBN has accessed letters written by Shehla to the Union Environmental Minister Jayanti Natrajan against illegal diamond mining in Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh. Phone records available also show that someone from Uganda was trying to get in touch with her hours after she was killed. The letter from Shehla to Jayanti Natrajan was written as recently...

In her pre-Independence Day address, the President of India advocated the need for enhanced transparency and accountability in government, stressing the need for the adoption of rational and practical approaches in addressing these challenges. Her choice of qualifiers is significant, since the need for reform is especially being felt in government contracts, with recent government initiatives such as enacting a formal public procurement law for India, and for laying down...

-The Deccan Chronicle   Shashidhar Mishra could have spent his entire life as a street vendor in his native village at Begusarai, Bihar. But he decided to get the information kept in the government files unlocked by filing more than 1,000 RTI applications. The reward he got was death. He was killed in his native village by unidentified gunmen in February 2010. Mishra is among at least 16 RTI activists who have...

Bringing an aggressive outlook to the ministry of rural development, Jairam Ramesh, who took charge of the portfolio in July, has attempted to address and fast-track contentious issues such as the proposed land acquisition legislation and the census for identifying households below the poverty line (BPL). Ramesh spoke in an interview about his blueprint for the ministry and revisiting controversial elements, including identifying the poor and poverty caps imposed by...

The proposed regulations aim to create a new countrywide infrastructure for trading of commodity-based securities in the form of electronic receipts as with equity shares on exchanges A committee under the Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) has recommended regulatory changes that can effectively control prices of food items, improve lives of farmers and change the warehousing landscape in India. The proposed regulations, drafted in consultation with the capital market regulator, the...