-The Hindustan Times India has driven the truck of development - loaded with tar, bricks, glass, concrete...the works - right through its most treasured and fragile green spaces in the last decade. While major cities like Delhi and Mumbai sacrificed green cover for real estate, the country's finest wildlife corridors have been ceded to indiscriminate industrialisation. In the absence of a clear policy to balance development and environment, the Aravallis in Gurgaon,...

-The Business Standard The IEO which has been modeled on the lines of Mexico's CONEVAL India's first independent evaluation office (IEO) was formally launched on Wednesday. The office is mandated to suggest radical changes in the government's social sector initiatives, as well as in its interface with the private sector through public-private partnership projects. The IEO, modelled on the lines of Mexico's National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy, will give...

-The Hindu     Some changes were ordered on the direct instructions of the Prime Minister The Prime Minister's office has repeatedly ordered and orchestrated dilution of environment and forest clearances in order to fast-pace industrial projects, documents with The Hindu show. In a series of orders and missives sent to the Union Environment and Forests Ministry over 2012-2013, the PMO instructed that regulations and norms had to be diluted or done away with. These...

-The Business Standard It is an inconvenient truth that the poorest people in India live in the country's richest forests. The management of this green wealth has not brought any benefits to the locals Forests have been blacked out in the economic assessment of the country. The Economic Survey does not even list forestry as a sector, for which accounts are prepared. Instead, it is lumped together with agriculture and fisheries. In...

-Outlook Sydney: The OECD today said India needs to address its infrastructure shortfalls and pervasive state control in business activities, among other things, to maintain robust growth. In its 'Going for Growth' report, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) called for structural policy reforms to boost growth. "To maintain robust growth, India needs to address its infrastructure shortfalls, pervasive state control in business activities and unequal access to quality education. "It also...