After almost more than eight years of the Right to Information Act being in force, the process of accessing information still faces impediments. The flow of information is restricted either due to various public institutions not coming within the ambit of the Act or the information being exempt under various clauses of the Act.

Today, we stand at a juncture where the chief beneficiaries of the neo-liberal model of “development” have succeeded in presenting it as the one best suited for everyone’s needs, which the Bharatiya Janata Party has used to garner electoral support. If we are honest about fighting Modi, it is time to seriously interrogate our complicity in the story of “development”.

As Lok Sabha elections 2014 in India ends with vote-counting on 16 May 2014, this paper published in Nature warns that with two of the three main parties making scant mention of science in their manifestos, Indian science will not get the boost it needs to become internationally competitive. Says that whichever party wins, the government must do more than pay lip service to science.