-Live Mint Mani Shankar Aiyar, India's first panchyati raj minister, talks about the challenges the institutions face On Wednesday, India marked 20 years of panchayati raj, an exercise in devolving power to people at the grassroots. Rajya Sabha memberMani Shankar Aiyar was India's first panchyati raj minister, appointed to the newly created ministry in 2004. He headed a committee that examined the reasons why attempts at sharing power with self-governance units haven't...

-Live Mint Government rejects coal price pooling, moves closer to allowing projects assured fuel linkages by CIL to import coal The government rejected a proposal to pool coal prices and instead moved a step closer to allowing power projects that had been awarded through competitive bidding and assured fuel linkages by state-owned miner Coal India Ltd (CIL) to import the fuel and pass on the incremental costs as higher electricity tariffs. Price pooling...

-The Telegraph The Prime Minister today tipped civil servants on technology's power to carry government services to the remotest corners. He might have been surprised to learn that closer home, it was a different story. At the capital's seat of power, the babus are beating technology hands down. In 2009, then home minister P. Chidambaram had introduced a biometric attendance system to ensure punctuality in his ministry. He himself was often seen holding...

-The Hindu It's been four months since agitated citizens exploded in anger against sexual violence directed at women, since the Prime Minister said the Delhi gang rape victim's death last December would not be in vain and the nation took a collective vow to repudiate the medieval social attitudes and patriarchal prejudices that give rise to and sanction violence against women. More than two months have gone by since the law...

-The Economic Times Young IAS officer Omprakash Choudhary has won the Prime Minister's award for excellence in public administration for his stellar work in education in Chattisgarh's Dantewada district, the scene of country's worst Naxal insurgency. The 31-year-old officer of the 2005 batch was among the youngest recipients ever to receive the award on Sunday, which happens to be Civil Services Day in Delhi. "Dantewada district is my first posting as a...