Can the promise of a car or a mixer grinder help keep India's population in check? Well, that's what health authorities in the northern state of Rajasthan apparently believe. They are offering a cheap car, among other things, as a prize in an attempt to sign up some 20,000 people to meet an ambitious sterilisation target. Time will tell whether this turns out to be another gimmick or an innovative incentive. But...

The Pune bench of the State Information Commissioner (SIC) has been witnessing a deluge of second appeals. A majority of these appeals, interestingly, have been filed by only a handful of people. Since the establishment of the Pune bench of the SIC in February 2007, 938 second appeals have been filed by 97 individuals. RTI activists claim this habit of filing multiple appeals is a major cause for the rise in pendency...

A day after the Supreme Court upheld the Allahabad High Court order quashing state acquisition of farm land in Shahberi, farmers of other villages that make Noida Extension announced they too would move court against acquisition of their land by the government. This is likely to put a spanner in the works of major building projects already underway in the area. At a panchayat in BISrakh village on Thursday, residents of...

Accusing the government of interfering in the affairs of minority institutions, the Catholic BIShops Conference of Madhya Pradesh has challenged the implementation of the Right to Education Act in the state. A division bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Wednesday issued notices to the Principle Secretary (school education), the Directorate of Public Instructions and the District Education Officer in Bhopal. Advocate Jamesh Anthony, who appeared for the Conference, argued...

The mid-term appraisal of the rural development programmes during the ongoing 11th Five-Year Plan points out several holes in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Uttar Pradesh. This not only reaffirms the public perception of poor performance of UP, but also sets aside the defence put up against scathing criticism of her government by chief minister Mayawati time and again. The development has come...