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Dear Reader,
There is a growing perception that the vaunted Right To Information Act, 2005 – the vanguard of transparency and accountability in governance – has been sought to be steadily diluted.
The recently introduced Digital Personal Data Protection Act, is seen as yet another stab at the heart of the RTI provisions. The Supreme Court Observer laments that this erosion of the right to information through legislative sleight of hand, executive encroachment and procedural inertia has not attracted judicial scrutiny and the enforcement that it deserves. And, the RTI Act is degenerating into a pale shadow of what it once was.
This penchant for executive overreach through the legislative route on critical issues was once again evident in the new forest law passed by Parliament in August. The Forest Conservation Amendment (FCA) Act, unfortunately, seems to pave the way for the fragmenting of the forest corridors for wildlife. As Article 14 points out, the government’s own institution has asserted that these corridors are critical for conservation and ensuring “genetic exchange through dispersal”. They further assert that the tendency to give in to the pressures of urbanisation at the cost of ecology should be fiercely resisted.
Unfortunately, it is not only the forests and wildlife that unbridled urban growth takes a toll on. The Citizen brings you the story of how Dehradun - hitherto a haven for education, research and military institutions - is now equally notorious for pollution, urban decay and overcrowding. The story also looks at what can be done to rescue it – including a metro rail network.
And, in Kashmir, Kashmir Observer reports that while ‘Cannabis’ invokes images of haze, intoxication and a ‘high’, it also has the potential of being a “wonder drug”, that can unleash a new world of healing. The story tells you how the Council of Scientific Research-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine in Jammu has initiated the ‘Cannabis Research Project’, the only one of its kind in India, which explores the “healing properties “of the plant beyond its hallucinatory aspects.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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