The youth will not take no for an answer. Five years on, the RTI comes of age. At four feet something, Santosh’s energy belies her petite frame. The school dropout was introduced to RTI through activist Arvind Kejriwal, and now, at Parivartan’s Sundar Nagri office, she holds fort, helping others acquire everything from BPL and ration cards to school admissions through RTI. Threats and attacks by local authorities who dubbed her...

This important question of law referred to larger Bench of Supreme Court Is a person belonging to a Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe in a State entitled or not to benefits or concessions allowed to SC/ST candidates in employment in another State? The Supreme Court on Thursday referred this question to a larger Bench. A Bench of Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar, in its order, said: “A very important question of law...

The definition of poverty has been at the core of discussions and commitments at the international level to address it and, by a logical conclusion, to eradicate it. This intent is the basis for the lofty Millennium Development Goals adopted by the UN member-states and international organisations at the beginning of this century. Now, 10 years later, the UN Summit on MDGs in New York last month was meant to...

The untiring champion of the downtrodden and civil rights and former IAS official (1956 batch) of the Andhra Pradesh cadre S R Sankaran passed away on Thursday in Hyderabad. A bachelor, Sanakaran was 76. Though retired in 1992, he never called off his mission to defend the rights of the marginalised sections. Be it government, Maoists, civil rights organisations, Supreme Court or Planning Commission of India, his Services were most sought...

In the long speeches made at the opening ceremony of the CW games, every important individual, department or institution that made a contribution, was acknowledged. Did anyone hear a word about the workers who made these world-class games possible? Maybe it was just a slip or maybe it was not considered necessary. Anyway, the workers were not there for the speeches, having been driven out of the capital just a...