Kudos

There have been several posts on several other blogs and websites congratulating and singing paeans to Mr. Subhash Chandra Agrawal. Who is the foremost hero of the Judges Assets saga (If you find the discussions there too legalistic you can try this). The achievements of this man seem to have first come to the attention of the national media after the CIC decision directing the CPIO of the SC to provide information as to whether the 1997 resolution has been complied with. At the time, while I had lauded the man for his courage and initiative, I hadn't seen this as part of a larger plan. The admiration I have for him only grows everyday as news pours in of each new conquest of his. His latest petition has only shown that the strategy is far deeper than it had initially seemed. Hats off to you sir.

Interesting posts on other blogs

This is my last couple of months on the Legal Services Clinic, NLSIU and it marks the end of four years on the committee. This hasn't hit me completely yet. I shall use this opportunity to pimp the LSC blog though. Do check out the latest post (here, if you didn't click on it two lines ago). It is not a LLP report like most other posts. It's by me, but that's not the reason I put up this link under interesting posts.

I had a good laugh for more reasons than one when I read this post by none other than the very influential Krugman. I'll put up the punchline here

So Citigroup is profitable because investors think it’s failing, while Morgan Stanley is losing money because investors think it will survive. I am not making this up.

Mr. Sudarsana Natchiappan please note

Sometime last trimester, the Legal Services Clinic made a presentation on local mediation systems as a way of reducing the backlog in courts and speeding up the justice delivery project to the Departmentally Related Standing Committee for Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice chaired by Honorable Member of Parliament Shri E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan.

Just before we made our presentation, we were witness to a press conference by the committee during which the Honorable Chairman declared that all government websites were updated as per the needs of the Right to Information Act 2005. After giving up addictinggames.com, miniclip.com and metacafe I have been on a spree of browsing websites of government departments. Here is a short list of websites that I have been going through, of government departments that do not comply with mandatory voluntary disclosure under S4 (1) b of the RTI Act 2005.

1. Central Ground Water Board you want to check the website out for yourself, you can click on the link provided. like duh.
2. Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority. Agreed, it isn't a central govt undertaking and therefore Shri Natchiappan wasn't referring to it but still.
3. Southern Regional Power Committee.
4. Department of agricultural marketing
5. Karnataka Election Comission
6. Central Board of Excise and Customs, Bangalore branch Not to say that it is only Bangalore branch that hasn't published information. I just haven't checked the other branches.
7. Coal India Limited - Not a department but a PSU.
8. Dredging Corporation of India I just thought their name was funny.
9. Hindustan Latex Corporation
10. Finance Ministry Dude, at least all the other ones till now were small, unimportant ones.
11. Population Commission


Something I reserved for the end for drama value
12. Ministry of Law and Justice

There definitely were lots more which I have seen myself and I'm sure there are a lot of departments I'm yet to visit. There better be, I have a month of holidays left.