-The Hindustan   If you wish to investigate the proceedings of any redevelopment project but find it difficult due to the unavailability of City Survey number (CS no.), you can find the information with the mere click of a mouse. A few Right To Information (RTI) Activists have acquired detailed reports of 1,365 redevelopment projects from the Maharashtra Housing Area Development Authority (Mhada) and the civic building proposal department. The information is...

If the problems are macro, think micro. That seems to have been the guiding principle for Lekha-Mendha, the Maharashtra village that last month became the first in India to win the right to grow, harvest and sell bamboo. Such rights are the key goal of a five-year-old central law which aims to give tribal communities control over some resources of the jungles they live in. “There is no point in looking out...

The World Bank has backed a controversial proposal to replace foodgrain allotment under the public distribution system with a system of direct cash transfer. The bank, which supports social security schemes in India, today said poverty reduction had been low and overall returns on spending to eradicate poverty had “not reached their full potential”. It attributed the low reduction to “high leakage” in the PDS system and its weak implementation mechanism. Earlier,...

To give information to an RTI Activist on pending trial cases under labour Act The Central Information Commission has directed the Divisional Commissioner of the Revenue Department to furnish information to an RTI Activist regarding prosecutions, if any, conducted for violation of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, for which she had filed an application almost a year ago. Priyanka Sinha, a representative of non-government organisation Pratidhi, had moved an application in...

Amidst protest from anti-Posco Activists, Orissa government on Wednesday resumed land acquisition work for Korean steel major’s proposed $12,000 (Rs 54,000 crore) steel plant near Paradip in Jagatsinghpur district, following union ministry for environment and forest’s final forest clearance to the project on May 2. Jagatsinghpur collector NC Jena said the teams comprising officials from the revenue department and Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IIDO) were involved in the land acquisition process....