Naseema Akhtar, 38, worries that her daily treks to collect clean water from the mountain springs around her village of Bonpora, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, are getting longer. She is already doing more than seven km every day. "The higher up you go, the cleaner the water is likely to be, but there is a limit to how far one can climb to fetch a pitcher of water," she told IPS....

-The Hindu   “Heart of policy is that government believes people should pay tax somewhere” Even as Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee faces flak from corporates at home and abroad on his budget proposal to tax Vodafone-type deals through retrospective amendment, World Bank president Robert Zoellick sought to side with the government saying India wanted the company to pay tax at some place. He also reasoned that investors must give some time to the government...

Under fire over data integrity issues, the government has tasked a panel to revise the wholesale price index (WPI) with the mandate to "enhance the reliability" of official statistics on all inflation measures.  The 31-member panel, to be headed by Planning Commission member Saumitra Chaudhuri, has also been asked to explore the possibility of getting a single agency to collect data for compiling WPI and industrial production that are hitherto dealt...

-The Times of India   Terming exemptions to the RTI Act introduced through the proposed Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) bill as "regressive", information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi and legal luminary Fali Nariman have urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reconsider the amendments in the interest of transparency. Nariman said the amendments were "unnecessary" and against the letter and spirit of the Act. "I am distressed to hear that the government of India proposes...

Sitting and aspiring MCD councillors of Trilokpuri area got a lesson in RTEon Wednesday. At a public meeting organized by JOSH, locals flocked to meet them with lots of suggestions and many complaints about the lack of educational facilities in their east Delhi colony. All that the candidates could muster as a response was a slew of promises most of which were shrouded in ignorance about the provisions of the...