In August 2007, 2 major telecom companies, Bharti and Vodafone Essar raised their tariffs for STD, local calls, SMS and value-added services. The issue is that these rate increases were done very close together, which is done normally by companies who are acting in concert with each other. This is illegal and bad for consumers since such collaboration will normally result in bad consumer behavior, price fixing; and the power of open market competition goes away, so now the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission is investigating this incident:

The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Commission has directed its investigative arm Director General of Investigation and Registration (DGIR) to conduct a probe into the manner in which the companies raised tariffs last month. The Commission suspects these companies have formed a cartel and are distorting competition in the market, sources said.
MRTPC took suo moto cognizance of reports over price hike, sources said, adding, tariff hike was almost simultaneous and the Commission suspects that it was a coordinated action. Another leading telecom player Idea Cellular may also be included in the probe later, they said.

One hopes that this investigation will be done seriously and if the companies are found guilty, they would be fined to the extent possible.

This seems like a good way to help farmers in Haryana to get information that helps them, and that too without running around and chasing after some Government Babu who may not be too interested. Sometimes one wonders as to how Government departments are able to implement such innovative solutions, that too, which actually work and which can be used by people in the State, no matter where they reside:

Farmers in Haryana are SMSing a free government helpline to get solutions to their agro-problems. The government set up this trouble-shooting service in February, the first of its kind in the country. Farmers can contact senior officials of the agriculture department for advice. Even illiterate farmers are taking help of others in the family or neighbourhood to send SMSes.
Officials say it will take time to exploit such technology in the farm sector. They feel this service will go a long way to educate farmers once they get hooked to it. The department feels that farmers have been deprived of scientific advice as agriculture department officials and professors of agriculture universities have been unable to disseminate information to farmers in remote areas. Mobile technology is helping surmount these problems.

This can be really useful for farmers. If Indian agriculture can increase their productivity, it will enrich a lot of farmers and really drive up the rural economy, and bring about a change in the income level across the country. What really helps is that when such a service is implemented in one region, other regions make an effort to copy it and learn from the implementation.
In February, the Haryana Agriculture Department set up the totally free SMS service to reply to the problems and queries of the farmers. All the farmers need to do is send a text message to 9915862026 after which scientists and officials get in touch with the farmers through telephone. What’s best is that the farmers are contacted within 24-48 hours itself. Another good thing about the service is that the farmers do not experience any dent in their pockets whatsoever, as the telephone call costs is borne by the state government.
The Central government had also set up a toll free Kisan Call Centre. Level-I Call Centre for Haryana had been arranged at National Horticulture Board, Gurgaon with telephone number 1551. The level-II Centres of this service had been established at Directorate of Agriculture, Directorate of Horticulture, Panchkula and CCS Haryana Agriculture University, Hisar. The Department is offering further help through the process of computerization and automation of the field offices and had launched its website, www.agriharyana.nic.in.

No one would have expected this. It was known that Indians are very irritated with the number of unwanted calls they get from tele-marketers, and hence most people welcomed the setting up a National Do Not Call Registry, but this would have been most unexpected. When the registry opened on September 5, 2007, it got 5 million users. This is an incredible number and demonstrates how much people are willing to go to avoid these unwanted calls.

The sheer numbers — around 2.5% of India’s over 190 million mobile subscribers — reveal just how much people resent pesky sales calls. Considering that prepaid subscribers — who are much less of a target for telemarketers — form a huge percentage of all subscribers, this figure of 5 million assumes even greater significance.
The sheer numbers — around 2.5% of India’s over 190 million mobile subscribers — reveal just how much people resent pesky sales calls. Considering that prepaid subscribers — who are much less of a target for telemarketers — form a huge percentage of all subscribers, this figure of 5 million assumes even greater significance.

The website of the Registry is available at this link.
The NDNC Registry will be a data base having the list of all telephone numbers of the subscribers who do not want to receive UCC.After the establishment of NDNC registry, Telephone subscriber (Landline or mobile) who does not wish to receive UCC, can register their telephone number with their telecom service provider for inclusion in the NDNC. Telecom Service Provider shall upload the telephone number to the NDNC within 45 days of receipt. The Telemarketer will have to verify their calling telephone numbers list with the NDNC registry before making a call.An amount of Rs 500/- per call/message has been prescribed to discourage telemarketers who make calls to numbers registered in Do Not Call list. The defaulter telemarketer will face disconnection of telecom service.

Individual DNC numbers for different services
Airtel (link)
Hutch (link)
Reliance (link)
BSNL (link)
Idea (link)

In Delhi, handling traffic offenses can be a big deal. Suppose you are doing something like speeding or jumping a red light (as people in Delhi do often), then it is easy to handle. A traffic policeman will catch you, and make you pay a fine on the spot. However, if you are unlucky enough to be noticed by a policeman who is unable to catch you, then you will get a fine posted to your house (to the registration address of the vehicle). There are people who don’t pay up and tear up these challans, but this is an unwise policy since it is illegal, and if ever Delhi traffic police gets its act together, then you can be in serious trouble. A lot of people decide to pay these; however there are problems with this approach. You don’t have a way to challenge these challans unless you are willing to wait for a senior official with the authority to overule the challan, otherwise you make your way to the police station and pay up.
However, Delhi police decided to make this process customer friendly by setting up traffic adalats where you can go and pay your challan, and in addition, they have given a way to locate all challans issued to you. However, this seems to have been a one-time option, but even then, it is a good measure:

In a progressive move to settle pending traffic offence cases, the Delhi Traffic Police constituted five mega lok adalats, which started work on Saturday and would continue on Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm at Patiala House, Rohini, Karkardooma and Tis Hazari courts. They would help settle long standing challans for as low as Rs 50. “Around 17,000 people turned up on Saturday alone, at the various courts,” said a senior traffic police official.
Many people jumped into action on Saturday morning after reading in the paper about the special courts. Ashish Mittal, a management student said: “I read the report in the newspaper and checked for challans against me on the Delhi Traffic Police website (delhitrafficpolice.nic.in), by entering my licence plate number and discovered I had two pending challans. I grabbed the opportunity to get rid of this headache and was charged just Rs 50 instead of Rs 900.”

The normal measure for handling a police challan is outlined at this page on the Delhi Traffic Police site, and the normal place to deposit such challan amount by cash / cheque is either of these 3 locations:
1. Teen Murti Traffic Lines, Mother Teresa Crescent, New Delhi
2. Police Station R.K. Puram Sector 12, R.K. Puram, New Delhi
3. DCP/Traffic (Northern Range) Office, Old Police Lines, Court Road, Delhi
In addition to above one can deposit the compounding amount by cheque only for the notices sent to your residence u/s 133 MVA at the following 4 locations:

1. Police Station Shakarpur, Delhi
2. Police Station Keshav Puram (Lawrence Road), Delhi
3. DCP/Traffic (Southern Range) Office, J B Tito Marg, Sadiq Nagar, New Delhi
4. Traffic Training (TT) Park, Punjabi Bagh, Delhi

Andhra Pradesh led the public perception in trying to ensure that citizens got quick access to information through greater availability of such information through the internet and through public networks. These included records such as land records, farm information, weather information, all information that helps citizens and which was available with great difficult; such information was prized by the bureaucracy and meant a great source of money to the babudom. With more such information being available easily and another useful weapon in the shape of the RTI Act, maybe things can change for the better. Read on more about what Uttar Pradesh can do:

LUCKNOW: Moving a step forward in the direction of implementation of e-governance for discharging government related works, 33 websites of different departments were formally inaugurated on Saturday by chief secretary PK Mishra. Principal secretary information technology VN Garg told reporters that the main objective of launching websites of all government departments was to ensure transparency in functioning of the government.
Besides necessary training to the staff, computer and Internet facility shall be provided to each of the sections in the next few months, said the principal secretary, adding that it would bring about revolutionary change in the functioning of the government. Referring to the importance of departmental websites, Garg said that the public in general would largely be benefited by the information available on the websites. Citing an example, he said, “If a person has applied for a gun licence and wishes to know the status of his application, a simple click of the mouse on the collectorate’s website would do the needful,” said the IT principal secretary.
Garg said that till now the departmental websites were updated by the NIC but now it was made mandatory for the departmental heads to periodically update their website. To provide e-governance facility at the district level, a pilot project covering six districts — Sitapur, Sultanpur, Gorakhpur, Rae Bareli, Ghaziabad and Noida —- has been launched.

This is a very tough call. The political leaders need to realize that once the genie of more public information is available and people get used to this access, it will be difficult to get back. Also, the removal of such a source of easy corrupt money will be a hard take for the babudom :-). and since political leaders at a local level also make use of such corruption, this will make things harder. However, it is very good news for local citizens, getting access to non-secret information is their right.