The National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Sonia Gandhi, has sought a reply from the Centre on a report by its working group on transparency. The report says the Right to Information (RTI) rules are against the basic spirit of the law drafted by the NAC in its first avatar. The report prepared by Aruna Roy, a council member, had highlighted that RTI rules fail to address several lacunas in the...

A small farmer in Maharashtra, whose high-yielding rice variety is popular in five States, is denied the benefits of his research. TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, Dadaji Khobragade of Nanded Fakir village in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra noticed yellow seeds in three spikes of a paddy stalk in his field. Intrigued by the freak harvest, he preserved the grains. He subsequently planted them in a six-foot square plot, which he covered with thorny...

So why is the UPA hell-bent on killing its unique success story: the NREGA? Here's the inside narrative of the conspiracy. It took 47 days of a protest sit-in at Jaipur to make the state budge(1). It's notable that the objective of this protracted protest was not to coerce the Rajasthan government for an extra share of the state's resources, but to hold the government accountable to the Constitution and its...

Right to Food Campaign demands a universal PDS “It is a dishonest proposal of the government” The Right of Food Campaign has charged the Central government with lack of commitment in providing food and nutrition security to citizens with its reported decision to revise the issue prices of wheat and rice for the Above Poverty Line (APL) category of beneficiaries in the Public Distribution System (PDS). “This is the first step to finish...

The National Advisory Council chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi today said the Forest Rights Act (FRA) needed strengthening and the Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Work Place Bill, 2010, must be extended to domestic workers. It also discussed how to push its views on the proposed National Food Security Bill, apart from deciding to examine the working of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme. Aat a meeting today...