-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Government agencies and departments, regarded as bywords for inefficiency and red tape, have recorded over a billion e-governance transactions so far this year, watershed for the world's largest democracy that is betting on technology to cure its ills. "It is an important milestone for India's e-governance initiative," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology. "With better accessibility and more projects getting completed,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Political parties and candidates will now have to account for every penny spent on the use of social media for their poll campaigns. The Election Commission on Friday issued detailed guidelines to regulate internet campaigns on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc, asking candidates to declare their social media accounts and all political parties to pre-certify advertisements before they are posted on social media websites. The instructions also require...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to pay Rs 1 lakh as compensation to the family of a tribal maidservant from Jharkhand, whose body was found hanging at her employer's Kaushambi home in Ghaziabad this June. The commission issued this directive after a detailed hearing of the case in which senior officials of Jharkhand state anti-trafficking unit and UP...

-The Hindu Delayed payments to poor households threaten to scuttle scheme to build toilets under Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan Churu (Rajasthan): Three years ago, Churu, a town of 1.2-lakh people in the Thar desert, was ranked India's dirtiest town by the Planning Commission. Two years ago, the overall district had over 40 per cent households with no toilet of their own. Today, the district is close to its goal of becoming open defecation-free,...

-Outlook The faecal matter hits the rotary blades, politically-but we're still staring at a sanitation disaster "Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate mostly besides the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover." -V.S. Naipaul An Area of Darkness, 1964 Not...