International Journal of Political Science

 Transparency seems to be the only means for sustaining democratic governance. That is why the right to information has been legislated in about 70 countries of the world, and another 30 countries are in the process of legislation. It was in this context that the RTI was enacted in India in 2005. The experience of 5 years shows that the response to this Act has been very positive and optimistic. It has also been widely welcomed by the people at all levels. They have been seeking various types of Information from different authorities. The RTI Act confers on all citizens the right to seek information and makes it the duty of the public authorities to disseminate the same for better governance and accountability. It covers the central, state and local governments and recipients of Government Grants but does not apply to the intelligence and security organizations except if the information released to the allegations of corruption. Objections to the Official Secrets Act have been raised ever since 1948, when the Press Laws Enquiry Committee recommended certain amendments. In fact, the Act has been used time and again to suit the purposes of the government. In 1977, a Working Group was formed by the Janata Party government to look into the possibilities of amending the Official secrets Act. Unfortunately, the Working Group did not recommend changes, as it felt that the Act related to the protection of national safety and did not prevent the release of information in the public interest; despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Official Secret act remained unaltered. In early 1989, V. P. Singh’s National Front Government came to power and declared its decision to make Right to Information a fundamental right.

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Presidential pardons have been the subject of increased public and judicial scrutiny and the focus of news media both electronic as well as print media. The power to grant pardon is expressly included in the modern written Constitutions of nearly all countries. The rationale underlying executive pardons are twofold: 

(1) It is to prevent the miscarriage of justice. The judges are not infallible and at times while enforcing the criminal laws, the courts can end up making mistakes, which then require correction.

(2) It is for public welfare. It is in the interest of the society, the laws and sentence fixed by the judgment are not strictly applied and the punishment inflicted is reduced.

The philosophy of punishment rests on four tenets. It can be a deterrent and work by creating fear. It can be retributive, making one pay for it. It can also be preventive, to strengthen the human character. It is the last theory that inevitably works behind clemency. As Abdul Kalam says “law is also a medium of reform.” Article 72 and 161 of Indian Constitution entrusted this power in the president of India and Governors of the state. In this paper an attempt has been made to analyze constitutional provisions with regard to pardon and nature and scope of pardoning power of president as well as the important cases and judicial decisions of Supreme Court with regard to clemency and pardoning powers of president of India.

Keywords: Colonial Period; Muslim society; Bengal; Polygamy; Marriage; Child Marriage; Custom. 

 Civil Service Reforms (CSR) mean different things to different stakeholders in India. There has been a dearth of studies on CSR from a holistic perspective. This study attempts to fill this gap by ascertaining views of stakeholders on CSR in India. It adopted purposive and convenient sampling. Primary data was collected from a sample of 27 respondents that includes civil servants, civil service aspirants, member of a Civil Society Organisation (CSO), member of Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), former member of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) and policy expert. Secondary data was collected from the relevant books on CSR, articles in peer reviewed journals and web sources. Thematic analysis was adopted for data analysis through Axial Coding. Major findings of the study: Civil service in India came under the increasing pressure to adapt itself from being a ‘commander’ of the public services to that of ‘partner’ with CSOs and private sector;  and from being ‘generalist’ to that of ‘specialist’. Yet, it is not able to cope with these demands. On the other hand, State’s policy on CSR has been incremental. The study finds gaps between policy on CSR and expectations of stakeholders.

 Keywords: Civil service reforms; Stakeholders; Perspective; Thematic analysis; Transformative. 

 The important role of religious identities in Indian political process is traced to the rise of nationalism through religious symbols, partition of the country and post-independence politico-religious mobilization. In the debate on religion-politics interface, the inner complexity of religious identities is largely ignored by scholars and the debate is focused on the secularism vs. communalism. This paper departs from this tradition and proceeds on the assumptions: (a) that the articulation and expression of religious identities display marked difference among minorities and majority community, and (b) that the articulation and expression of identities is largely shaped by the perception of the socio-political crisis, and the objectives to be achieved. Hence, its political expression is not equally shared by and uniform among the members of same religious community. These assumptions may be tested on the basis of categorization of religious identities into three ideal types: 1. Primordial Religious Identity, largely shaped by historical and cultural claims of religious primacy, irrespective of secular constitutional scheme. 2. Crisis-Generated Religious Identity, which emerges in response to a socio-political crisis and aims at certain higher national goals. The religious nationalism of 19th century and partition politics are the example of this identity. 3. Reactionary Religious Identity, which emerges as a reaction to the perceive fear of dominance of or discrimination by another community. Also, the one form of religious identity may be transformed into another form. Using this framework, this paper throws new light on the interface between religion and politics in India.