GoI Monitor | Striving for better governance

GOI Monitor Desk

Western Ghats are suffering irreparable damage but Indian govt is busy burying its own investigations

Image 1: More than 30 bulldozers and 100 JCBs ply incessantly on a hill in Murbad tehsil of Maharashtra, excavating a huge foundation and simultaneously levelling the land to build a dam for which forest clearance has not been sanctioned yet. The project contractor has already felled thousands of trees near the dam site in collusion with local authorities. Besides, the land on which all this is going on has not yet been acquired nor the consents of gram sabhas taken. The project, if cleared, will inundate around 1,000 hectares of forest land.

Image 2: Hundreds of windmills rotate willingly on the hills near Bhimashankar wild life sanctuary. The hills, tracts of heavy rainfall, used to house more than 28,000 trees, all part of biodiversity-rich evergreen forest and home to Maharashtra’s state animal, Giant Squirrel. Despite the recommendation of local Range Forest Officer not to sanction the project, it was cleared.

Immune to accountability- II

Manu Moudgil

Second part of the series done for The Hoot analyses CIC's decisions on serious issues including mercy petitions, phone tapping and bank details

SINCE THE inception of the RTI Act in 2005, the role of Central Information Commission (CIC) has been exemplary. Barring some instances, the commission has been appreciated for ensuring that public authorities are accountable to the people. Along the way, it has dealt successfully with various serious issues like disclosure of information related to mercy petitions, phone tapping and bank details to name a few.

Curb on multiple attempts in engineering

GOI Monitor Desk

A new policy decision by Rajasthan govt on back papers in technical education is a welcome move but will the others follow?

ON FEBRUARY 10 this year, the technical education department of Rajasthan government came out with a landmark decision. Nobody who has cleared any semester/year of B.Tech or M.Tech in more than one attempts will be eligible for teaching positions at any degree-level government technical institution in the state. With this order, Rajasthan has become the only state with a clear cut policy aimed at improving the quality of teaching by taking into account the number of attempts made by candidates during their student years.

Bikaner-based activist Manoj Kamra, who triggered this change by appealing to the Rajasthan government, gathered information using the RTI Act which revealed that majority of faculty in the seven government engineering colleges took more than one attempt to clear their subjects.

Cast away for rehabilitation

Dhairya Maheshwari

Rajiv Awas Yojana promises moon to slum dwellers but only offers isolation, unemployment and insanitation

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN Alipur and Narela Sub City lies the village of Holambi Kalan. Around 47 km from Delhi's showpiece Connaught Place, this village was chosen for the relocation of families from JJ ( (short from jhugi, jhompri) clusters on Minto Road and R.K. Puram, two of the most prime areas of the capital. This move, under the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY), was supposed to change the lives of dwellers for better and ‘reintegrate’ them into the mainstream by providing affordable housing and bringing their lifestyle on par with other residents of the national capital region (NCR). However, this socio-economic experiment of the government has gone horribly wrong.

Ten years hence, the 70-odd hectare area still lacks a proper sewage system. The pipelines haven’t yet been laid.

'Slums are a solution not a problem'

GOI Monitor Desk

Why we need to assimilate slums, adopt BRT and change our outlook about urban development. Dunu Roy of Delhi-based Hazard Centre challenges the mainstream myths in this interview with GOI Monitor

Q It is estimated that by 2050, 54 per cent of Indians will live in cities. But with such a high premium being placed on urban land, how are the cities going to host migrants, especially the poor?

Firstly, that estimate is probably incorrect. Already, as indicated by the 2011 Census, urban growth is slowing down - from 54 per cent in the 1970s to 32 per cent currently even though the Census has classified over 2,500 new Census towns out of the total of almost 8,000 towns (from about 4,400 in 2001). Secondly, this move from rural to urban is being welcomed, even promoted, by policy making

Previous Edition

Reaping harvest of happiness

Farmers in Karnataka are showing the way to profitable farming by going organic and conserving traditional seeds

INDIA IS a centre of megadiversity, not only geographically but also in its food. For instance, there used to be more than 3 lakh varieties of rice and there are more than 50 traditional varieties of Brinjal grown in the country.

More than 20,000 varieties of rice have been documented by former director of Central Rice Research Institute, Dr R H Richaria, which are now stored at the Raipur-based Indira Gandhi Agriculture University gene bank.This diversity can be experienced when you visit parts of Odisha, Chattisgarh and other remote areas. In Sunderbans of West Bengal, you will find people defying agriculture scientists who claim that rice can’t be grown in salt water. This special salt-resistant variety of rice has been passed on to the people by their ancestors. Similarly, a deep water variety of rice is harvested using a small boat in areas around Kolkata and Visakhapatnam. Read more

Who watches the watchdogs?

Security concerns have forced India to beef up monitoring but this can lead to witch hunting

HAVE YOU ever felt like someone is looking over your shoulder as you write an email, transfer money through netbanking or fill a simple contest form? This concern should trouble us more often as we increasingly exchange personal information online taking it for granted that the whole set up is secure and snoop- proof.

The recent case involving Yahoo India can be a good starting point to help understand that the truth is quite contrary. If censuring of content by social networking sites was criticised for being against freedom of expression, the Yahoo India case may very well threaten the right to privacy of an individual. The Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA), a regulatory authority under the Information Technology Act 2000 had slapped a fine of Rs 11 lakh against Yahoo for not providing personal information related to some of its users. Though the fine has been stayed by the court, the incident underscores Read more

Delhi government plans to monitor the Internet

Internet content monitoring system on anvil but the draft bill has loopholes

AFTER A long procedure involving multiple RTI applications and complaint before the Central Information Commissioner, Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), a donor-supported legal services organisation for protection of freedom in the digital world, got access to a copy of the draft Regulation (Control and management of internet information) 2010(sic) of the State Government of Delhi. This draft reveals the attempt of the government to legalise monitoring of information on the the Internet and this raises serious questions of surveillance in the light of the recent reports in the media based on spy-files released by Wikileaks.

Under this regulation the Secretary, Department of IT is authorised to issue orders regarding monitoring of information. The regulation provides for an Advisory Board that will approve the permissions issued pertaining to interception, monitoring and decryption Read more

'Proposed law will protect animal rights'

Savage Garden may sing paeans for life of animals, the truth is they have a tough time putting up with us humans. India is soon going to have a law with better provisions to ensure ethical treatment of animals

DR MANILAL Valliyate, the director of veterinary affairs at PETA, shares his thoughts on how the proposed law will make us more humane.

Q. Since a new draft bill has been drafted on the issue of animal welfare, where was the earlier Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act lacking?

The draft is currently under consideration and could undergo further change. However a key difference in the draft Animal Welfare Act 2011 is the update in penalty for cruelty to animals. The existing Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act came in to effect Read more

Immune to accountability

Public officers have been wrongly invoking exemptions under national interest to deny information under the RTI Act. A two-part series done for The Hoot tracks denials and the CIC's approach.

THE RIGHT to Information (RTI) Act, which came into force on 12 October 2005, marked the evolution of India’s parliamentary democracy. The enactment of the legislation was the result of a persistent civil society movement which started in rural India to ensure right to work and livelihood to citizens through transparency in public works. The Official Secrets Act, which labelled everything out-of-bounds for common public, was booted out and accountability got a new lifeline. Six years down the line there are no regrets.

The most heartening fact is that people are increasingly arming themselves with the provisions of the legislation and turning Read more