What are the poor most concerned about? After meeting families in 175 Indian villages in the last decade, Anirudh Krishna, says the poor's greatest worry is their children's future. With a manner of a school teacher, Professor Krishna, who teaches at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in the US, has led a team meeting poor families to find out why poverty persists. The research also includes...

Objective is to make the public “feel the Government and not to see it” Project cost for Coimbatore is about Rs. 2 crore Coimbatore will soon become an “e-district” with select services of four departments going online initially. Tamil Nadu E-governance Agency Director Santhosh Babu told The Hindu that Coimbatore was one of the six districts that would come under e-governance in the State soon. Revenue, Adi Dravida and Tribal Welfare, Backward Classes,...

Despite repeated orders from the state and the central information commissions, public authorities continue to be adamant in rejecting applications filed under the Right To Information (RTI) Act by office-bearers of any organisation. They violate the transparency law saying applicants would be given information only if they apply in their individual capacity and not as representatives of an organisation. And the state health department has gone one step ahead. It...

Three years after lighting up the electricity-deprived remote villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh with power harnessed through rice husk, the team behind the venture is now undertaking a similar task in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Beginning with Tamkuha in Bihar, the ‘Husk Power System' designed by NRI entrepreneur Gyanesh Pandey has gone on to dispel darkness in over 125 villages since 2007. “The conventional technologies and grids had...

THE government is planning to transfer food entitlements to ration-card holders through an electronic system, once the public distribution system (PDS) is linked to the unique ID, or Aadhar’s central data repository. This would enable state governments to directly tell residents—who will have to have an online account linked to Aadhar—about their entitlements, a discussion paper with the Unique ID Authority points out. Entitlement details would be updated monthly through...