Parliamentary Research Service - an invaluable site tracking legislative activity in India

I stumbled on the Parliamentary Research Service (PRS) who describe themselves thus.

Parliamentary Research Service (PRS) is an independent, not-for-profit initiative that seeks to promote wider debate on upcoming legislative issues in Parliament. PRS seeks to promote good governance in India through supporting a transparent, better informed, and participatory legislative process. The work of PRS is collaborative and seeks to complement existing expertise in government, research institutions, business and citizen sector. PRS aims to

• Provide timely, easy-to-use and balanced analysis on upcoming legislative issues.
• Facilitate interaction of experts with those who seek a deeper understanding of legislative issues.
• Inform the larger public of the legislative issues being debated in Parliament and develop platforms for their opinions to be expressed.

PRS is being incubated by the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, which is an autonomous institution with the objective of studying major policy issues before the nation and suggesting alternative policy options.

There is very little quality reporting, let alone analysis, of the various bills and legislation coming up for discussion in Parliament today, in the mainstream newspapers and magazines. There are no websites that track parliament on a regular basis either. Given this, the PRS is an invaluable service. I hope they go on to become as comprehensive and detailed as CQ.com - the site that tracks the United States Congress and legislative/political activities in USA.

The PRS site lists recently introduced or to be introduced bills in Parliament - the list makes very interesting reading.

I'm sure the PRS site will attract a large enough number of users from both within Indian and outside that Google Adwords (or a similar service) could serve as a reasonable source of income for the site. Since PRS will have no say on who advertises on the site if they choose to use Google Adwords (or a similar service), conflicts of interest between editorial and advertising can be avoided.

Comments

[ishy]

agree wid u! nice blog :D