The Government proposal to make cash transfer in place of food grain to poor families has drawn mixed reactions. Raghuvir Nagar on the western outskirts of Delhi has of late turned into a turf for a war between two schools of thought. The war has not been limited to campaigns and debates and purportedly escalated to the level of allegations, even intimidation, so much so that the Government of the national...

The World Bank and a pliant UPA Government plan to do away with India's public distribution system and shut down four lakh ration shops. The excuse-the Public Distribution System (PDS) spends Rs 45,000 crore every year to supply BPL families wheat, rice, kerosene and sugar of which 60 per cent of grain is looted by the food mafia. The 412page 'World Bank Report: Social Protection for Changing India', released on...

  In a decision that is certain to generate a lot of heat, the Manmohan Singh government has exempted the CBI, the country's premier investigating agency, from providing information under the Right to Information Act . A notification to this effect was issued by the government on Thursday after the proposal got the Union Cabinet's green signal, placing the agency among a select category of institutions that have been kept outside...

In a decision which might irk RTI Activists, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been exempted from giving information under Right to Information Act. The decision was taken by the Cabinet on Thursday following repeated requests by the agency on the grounds that it probed sensitive cases, and in doing so, it "becomes difficult for it to share information and also in accessing the information'. The Cabinet took note of CBI's...

In reply to a question about his views of “western civilisation”, Gandhi is said to have remarked: “It is a good idea!” The resurgence of “civil society” in the past two decades has led to similar ironic comments: “Are the rest then uncivil?” and the like. But there is a serious question that needs articulation and addressal to make the current debate meaningful. Just what is civil society, and how...