AKHAND-JYOTI

In India, we have a powerful transparency tool. It is called the Right To Information (RTI) Act. The Government of India has made it compulsory for all government offices and enterprises to implement the RTI act. With the passage of time, all government transactions, businesses and operations have fallen under the scanner of the public view. The general public can now raise queries and inquire about what’s going on in a particular government office at a particular time regarding a particular task. The power of this information is amazing. In a short span of time, a lot of RTI activists have established themselves as active participants working to put responsibilities back on the shoulders of the government servants for completing the referred tasks as soon as possible. The RTI act has revolutionized the government-public interaction. At the international level, India is now considered as a progressive nation-state that values transparency in the public works. The RTI act has also l...

Arvind Kejriwal has just established a political party. This is  really  a good sign and I congratulate him for this; I also regret for being late in congratulating him. With the establishment of his political party, although the name of this party remains undisclosed, he has been making political allegations against every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the ruling party in India, or is related to this party in some way or the other. This fundamental task of identifying the corrupt persons, officials, and ministers is seen as the first and primary task of his political party. This, Arvind Kejriwal and his team think, could be an election-winning issue and help in gaining power in a state or at centre. Well the abovementioned actions do tell us all that Arvind’s political party is determined to identify the corrupt people, bring them in front of investigating agencies, and see that they get punished for whatever wrong they have done. However, when we look at all this from a bigg...

Since today it’s Gandhi Jayanti, all newspapers and news channels have been displaying content on Mahatma Gandhi’s life, his thoughts and the messages he gave to the world on the various matters that directly or indirectly influence the human life. The write ups of several senior journalists, editors and experts on Gandhian thoughts are stimulating enough for me to attempt to conjure up and present my thoughts about this great man. I was in school when I first read about Gandhi. Just like the rest of my friends in class, I was more concerned about scoring well-enough marks in my exams rather than ‘actually’ understanding the messages of Mahatma Gandhi. Appreciating his philosophy behind the call for Non-violence and Satyagraha was an uphill task for almost all of us, then. However, I used to feel ‘something’ whenever, on the occasions of Gandhi Jayanti and the Independence-Day function, our chief guests and principal used to praise the deeds of Mahatma Gandhi. Those school functions ...