-Business Standard FCRA amendment raises questions about ethical governance The little-noticed announcement in the Finance Bill to retrospectively amend a clause in the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) does little to enhance the government's reputation for ethical governance. The amendment, to apply from 2010, will mean that donations to political parties by Indian companies with foreign direct investment within mandated sectoral limits will no longer be considered "foreign contributions". The FCRA bans...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government has rubbished media reports that performance of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme in the current fiscal year will suffer due to arrears of wages of over Rs 8000 crore in 2015-16. Stating that certain facts in the reports have been highlighted without appreciating the larger picture, the government has clarified that is committed to ensure flow of adequate resources to the programme...

-Livemint.com NSSO report shows that private schools are preferred over government schools due to better quality education New Delhi: While presenting the budget for Delhi last month, finance minister Manish Sisodia announced an expenditure of Rs.102 crore on training of teachers and principals in the new fiscal year. This was just Rs.9.4 crore last year. Sisodia said his aim was to bring government schools to world class standards in Delhi. While...

-The Hindu Business Line BusinessLine goes to villages, including those visited in 2014, to understand the progress of the ambitious National Optical Fibre Network. Unused infrastructure and low awareness tell a story of missed links In one corner of the Ramnagar village panchayat office, in Panisagar block of Tripura, is a defunct four-year-old computer. The machine, connected with a 10 mbps broadband line was supposed to bring digital services to this remote...

-The Indian Express Several questions have been raised about our estimates of the savings from the DBT scheme for cooking gas. But all parties accept that the programme reduced subsidised sales by 24 per cent. Direct cash transfers have the potential to improve the economic lives of the poor by transferring benefits to households quickly and directly. Achieving these benefits requires thoughtful design of schemes, and careful, rigorous analysis of ongoing...