-Down to Earth Blog The performance of nutrition indicators amongst Dalits is improving, it is nowhere near the catch-up pace Does a new government and a strong Prime Minister claiming to hail from the backward caste augur Achche Din for Dalits too? We hope so! But political commitment-or lack of it-has multiple manifestations. In a deeply stratified society like India with entrenched elitism, people from the Scheduled Caste (referred to as Dalits...

-The Indian Express Despite the bureaucratic mindset, there are also tremendous positive effects. As speculation mounts by the day that the Modi government is thinking of winding up the Planning Commission, this is an opportune moment to reflect on the relevance of the institution in the context of a rapidly changing Indian economy and society. One way of classifying institutions is in terms of the balance between their potential positive power (PPP) and...

-The Hindu   Palakkad (Kerala): The Jharkhand State Child Rights Protection Commission (JSCRPC) will urge its State government to recommend a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the two incidents of alleged child trafficking in which 589 children from Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal were brought to Palakkad in Kerala. Talking to The Hindu here, commission member Sanjay Kumar Mishra said a CBI investigation was necessary as the case involved four States...

-The Hindu But Forest Department estimates damage to 620 hectares Bangalore: Recent satellite imagery reveals that nearly 2,500 hectares of land have been destroyed by forest fires at Bandipur and Nagarahole National Parks since they began over a week ago on March 13. An additional 450 hectares have been ravaged in Bandipur and 70 hectares in Nagarahole in the last three days alone, according to images captured by the Indian Space Research...

-The Business Standard Government slowness may have scuttled Aadhaar With the declaration that the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Nandan Nilekani, will stand as a Congress candidate in the coming Lok Sabha elections from a constituency in Bangalore, attention has once again been focused on the Aadhaar project. Aadhaar is almost at its target of enrolling 600 million people nationwide; Mr Nilekani says that the UIDAI has now got...