If powerful means are not found to address weak governance and pervasive corruption in scores of developing nations, new international efforts to fight environmental degradation, global warming, and poverty may prove tragically ineffective.rnIn India, a prospective solution to this global challenge has sprung from the impoverished village of Devdun-gari. Funding from the federal and state governments to promote development only reached Devdungari in sporadic trickles when at all, and villagers did not even receive the minimum wages due to them for their labor in government poverty relief programs. In the early 1990s a grass roots movement called the MKSS (the Hindi acronym for "Labor Farmer Strength Organization") worked with the villagers to obtain information on the diverted funds. The refusal of local and Indian government authorities to release information was rooted in both bureaucratic culture and law - including the 1923 British colonial Official Secrets Act, which India borrowed nearly intact.
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