-The Hindu India ranks 85 among 178 countries on the global Corruption Perception Index this year. India has marginally improved its ranking on the global Corruption Perception Index this year, on the back of prosecutions of high-level officials and hope that the new leadership will reduce corruption, Transparency International said on Wednesday morning. India's two-point improvement (on a total possible score of 100) did not count as a "significant change" unlike that in...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The capital's babus are feeling wanted. At last, a government seems to care about their "happiness", "satisfaction" and "contribution". A recent government circular prods Civil Servants to do voluntary social service for "internal happiness". Another requests each soon-to-retire official to write a 1,000-word paper on his or her "outstanding" contribution - for their own "satisfaction" and to inspire junior colleagues. They must, however, restrict themselves to personal innovations that...

-The Indian Express   The NDA government's move to amend the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 in the coming winter session of Parliament has run into rough weather following differences between various government departments over whether government servants and their family members should declare their assets, and whether such information should be made public or not. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) is learnt to have sided with the bureaucracy in...

-Tehelka The new and improved Bill to prevent atrocities against Dalits runs the risk of being put in the cold storage A crime against Dalits happens every 18 minutes - three women raped every day, 13 murdered every week, 27 atrocities every day, six kidnapped every week and so on. This is the data compiled by the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, an NGO, which paints a grim picture of Indian...

-Deccan Chronicle Under the stewardship of Union rural development minister Nitin Gadkari, things are looking far from good for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the 2005 law passed with cross-party support under UPA-1 that came to be hailed as the world's largest rural job guarantee scheme although, at home, some fair criticisms were also levelled at the way the project worked on the ground. The critics pointed to...