-The Economic Times Heaps of dusty files continue to grow in government buildings and sensitive papers are mysteriously lost, leaked or dramatically reduced to ashes in fires while the six-year-old plan to modernise and digitise governance remains tied up in what it should eliminate - red tape. The latest casualty was the Union home ministry, where a fire was reported on Sunday, days after a blaze engulfed Mumbai's Mantralaya, killing people and...

-Down to Earth But public sector, too. needs quality improvement, say researchers from University of California What should cash strapped low- and middle-income countries do to improve access to health care? Should they strengthen the public health sector or the private sector? The question remains unresolved, but often funds are redirected from the public exchequer to the private health sector, even though, there is not enough data to guide policy. Recently, the...

Any move by the government to dump the public distribution system for supply of food items to the poor is likely to face a tough challenge from various NGOs, which are planning to move the Supreme Court seeking its intervention in the matter. Armed with a survey report in by NGO, Lok Shakti Manch in various slum clusters in Delhi on whether PDS should be substituted with transfer of cash to...

-The Economic Times The largest United Nations conference in history is happening now in Brazil. Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, is assembling over 50,000 people and more than 130 heads of state and government. Beyond the politicalcommitments world leaders are promising to make by the end of the summit, how can Rio+20 help us promote actual changes in policymaking towards socio-environmental synergies? The two main themes of Rio+20 - the...

-DNA Slamming private educational institutes that often use RTI for accessing the question papers of various examinations and making it public for their commercial gains, the Delhi high court said sundry information, unrelated to transparency and Accountability, should not be allowed to be misused or abused. A division bench of acting chief justice A K Sikri and justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said this while setting aside the order of the Central Information...