NEW DELHI: The environment ministry made a specious argument before the Cuttack bench of Orissa High Court, defending its decision to clearPosco without verifying if the Forest Rights Act had been violated or not in diverting forest land to the Rs 54,000 crore integrated steel plant. It said that the law – also UPA's flagship pro-tribal scheme -- did not provide any mechanism to verify its implementation in a case,...
More »SEARCH RESULT
SATYANANAD MISHRA CHIEF INFORMATION COMMISSIONER IN WALK THE TALK WITH SHEKHAR GUPTA
In a season when every self-styled warrior against corruption is trying to look for a new weapon to fight it, my guest today is Satyananda Mishra, Chief Information Commissioner—someone who has in his control the strongest of those weapons, the RTI. Actually when it all began, nobody thought it would be so effective. In a period of five-and-a-half years, it has touched the hearts and minds of people. The number of...
More »Growing India, shrinking Bharat
As higher urbanisation has long-term consequences for governance, the latest numbers should serve as a heads-up to the planners. More Indians are moving into towns now. According to the 2011 Census, the urban population grew by 90.99 million between 2001 and 2011. The absolute increase in the rural population over this period was 90.47 million. Put differently, urban population grew by 31.8 per cent, a little over two-and-a-half times the corresponding...
More »Behind UP doctors’ killings, multi-crore health FRAud by Teena Thacker
Lucknow, New Delhi : In April this year, Babu Singh Kushwaha resigned as Uttar Pradesh’s family welfare minister, taking moral responsibility for the scam involving misappropriation of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) funds in the office of Lucknow’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) — a racket that was exposed after the murder of incumbent B P Singh. The money involved was a few crores and the men arrested were a former CMO,...
More »For better laws, debate and discuss bills first by Vipul Mudgal
Anna Hazare's campaign against corruption has a curious side-effect. It has turned the spotlight on India's lack of pre-legislative transparency. We may accept or dismiss team Anna's Jan Lokpal draft but his movement — and the subsequent build-up of hope and betrayal — has unwittingly exposed the systemic opaqueness in which our laws are conceived, written, debated and passed. The Lokpal Bill 2011 is one among 67-odd bills listed as...
More »