-The Hindustan Times A day after Hindustan Times exposed the tout-officer nexus at the transport department’s zonal Offices, nothing had changed on the ground. It was business as usual for touts and staff at the transport authority (as these zonal Offices are referred to). Touts were busy striking deals with gullible applicants. Typists and agents of ‘notary public’ were seen attesting copies of documents needed for learners’ and permanent licences. Missing...

-The Hindustan Times   To get a driver's licence, what you have to counter is nothing short of a licence raj. Your mammoth effort will not be enough to get you the licence to drive on Delhi's roads. However, like in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, help is always given to those who ask for it. At transport department Offices, this help comes in the form of touts.  Though the Delhi government had...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Thursday entertained a petition challenging the Akhilesh Yadav government's first Cabinet decision to do what was statutorily impermissible — re-induct Justice N K Mehrotra as UP lokayukta after he had completed a six-year non-renewable term as the head of the watchdog.  Petitioner advocate Mohd Saeed Siddiqui alleged that the decision to re-employ Justice Mehrotra was in contravention of Section 5 of the UP Lokayukta...

-The Telegraph On a full-attendance day at a business process outsourcing centre in a village in Uttar Pradesh, 40 boys and girls work on computers, each of their desktops powered by rooftop solar panels that turn sunlight into electricity. Their workplace, a two-storey building, is the only structure in Sonari, a village of about 1,700 people and located about 50km from Lucknow on the road to Sitapur, where electricity is guaranteed nine...

Punjab’s agricultural sector grew at 1.6 per cent during the 11th Plan against the national average of 3.41 per cent. The growth is tardy owing to near saturation in productivity. The rural debts in Punjab are estimated to be Rs 35,000 crore. The number of indebted rural households in Punjab is 66 per cent, third highest in the country after Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The Government of India’s debt...