Team Anna has deviated from goal of fighting corruption Waterman Rajendra Singh has accused Team Anna of straying from its goal of fighting corruption and turning into a “bunch of power brokers.” The success with the public during the Delhi fast of social activist Anna Hazare made them give up all pretensions to democratic functioning while at collective action, he charged. Mr. Singh, along with another social activist P.V. Rajagopal, recently quit...

The National Mission to improve the delivery of justice is at work. In October 2009, on the basis of a Vision Document adopted at a judicial conference in New Delhi, the Government of India approved in principle a National Mission to reduce pendency and delays in the judicial system and enhance accountability through structural changes, higher performance standards and capacity-building. Many past attempts to achieve the goals did not yield results...

Biraj Patnaik, principal adviser to the Supreme Court commissioners on the right to food, is up in arms against the National Food Security Bill. “Despite multiple meetings and many suggestions put forward, what we have is a mockery of a bill. The government has made a dog’s breakfast out of the right to food bill,” he exclaims. Patnaik’s is not a one-off complaint. Some argue that the country’s law-making process is...

-The Indian Express   When it burst into public consciousness earlier this year, the India Against Corruption movement appeared to be led by a team that instinctively understood each other, despite their differences. They came from a similar gene pool and had benefited from largely similar opportunities, they felt the same frustration with aspects of the state, they shared a common vocabulary, and the same burning priorities. They were united in their...

Six years after the Right to Information Act was passed by parliament, the government has made no progress in computerisation of its records, a promise it made in the law itself. Amid growing complaints from departments that most of their time is spent in handling RTIs, the Central Information Commission has now reminded the government to do a status check of the implementation of the RTI Act and computerise all...