-TheWire.in The Narendra Modi government's push to have research institutions depend less on public funds has been turned into a bad idea by the government's own priorities. “Innovate, patent, produce, prosper.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered these words in his inaugural address at the 107th Indian Science Congress, now underway in Bengaluru. Modi’s prescription (first advanced in early 2018) describes a straightforward path to success but it also quietly assumes an environment and...

-The Telegraph MGNREGA funds run thin, government sits on demand Millions of rural job scheme workers may have their wages delayed in the new year with the programme coffers depleting and the finance ministry sitting on the demand for additional funds. According to data on the scheme website, the funds available as of December 30, 2019, were Rs 2,766 crore, which social activists working on the scheme’s implementation said would be exhausted in...

-The Indian Express Government does well to constitute panel on economic statistics, and even better to include critics on it The Narendra Modi government deserves credit for constituting a new Standing Committee on Economic Statistics “to review the extant framework relating to data sources, indicators, concepts/definitions and other issues” connected with measurement of economic activity. Significantly, the panel is headed by the former chief statistician of India, Pronab Sen, and has at...

-PTI The first meeting of the SCES is scheduled on January 6, 2020 The statistics ministry has constituted a 28 member Standing Committee on Statistics (SCES) chaired by former Chief Statistician Pronab Sen to improve quality of data amid criticism of the government over political interference. “The first meeting of the SCES is scheduled on January 6, 2020. The agenda would be very broad based. We will come to know about that only...

-The Hindu Data on parents’ place of birth to be gathered; register already has data of 119 crore residents The Narendra Modi government proposes to update the existing National Population Register, which already has an electronic database of more than 119 crore residents, by verifying the details of all respondents through house-to-house enumeration, according to an official manual on conducting the fresh NPR exercise. The NPR exercise has become controversial because the Citizenship...