-India Spend/ Scroll.in In August, the CAG found that the National Rural Drinking Water Programme had failed to meet its targets. More than 163 million Indians – higher than the population of Russia – do not have access to safe drinking water, and the National Rural Drinking Water Programme, despite spending 90% of Rs 89,956 crore budget over five years to 2017, has “failed” its targets, according to an August 2018 report...

-The Tribune Need to readjust premium to favour farmers Insurance firms, both in the public and private sectors, have reportedly made a killing by offering crop insurance to farmers in about two dozen states. The Tribune reported abnormal gains by a dozen insurance firms through the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna (PMFBY). Insurers reportedly received a gross premium of Rs 22,362 crore under the scheme in 2016-17 and saved huge sums even...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Sixty retired bureaucrats have written to the CAG expressing concern over audit reports on demonetisation and the Rafale deal being "deliberately" delayed to not "embarrass" the NDA government till next year's general elections. In a letter, they said there was concern over the "unconscionable" and "unwarranted delay" in bringing out the audit reports on demonetisation and the Rafale fighter jet deal, and the reports should be...

-Frontline.in Four years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of the Namami Gange project, the river remains as dirty as ever. WHILE in Varanasi to file his nomination papers for the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi, then the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial nominee, had declared with his characteristic bravado, “I have not come here on my own. I have been invited by mother Ganga.” He said it was his...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Kerala did not have inundation maps or emergency action plans when waterworks engineers, responding to rising water levels, released the shutters of dams last week, but other states may be similarly vulnerable, a 2017 government audit report suggests. In the absence of detailed inundation maps or action plans, district authorities can warn local communities about an impending rise in water levels but without a clear idea of how...