-Tehelka Last year’s Red Fort rhetoric has not been matched by action on the ground, with separate toilets for students remaining elusive as ever One part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Independence Day this year can safely be predicted: the reeling out of statistics to prove that the Swachh Bharat campaign is sweeping the nation. The cleanliness drive launched on 2 October, 2014, was announced from the ramparts of the...

-The Indian Express Why is no political party protesting the non-implementation of the protection act? With suspicious attacks on whistleblowers, the Vyapam scam has highlighted the vulnerability of those who show truth to power. The string of corruption scandals that have surfaced in the last three months have established what many believe — in a country the size and diversity of India, it is impossible for a centralised mechanism to control corruption...

Although MGNREGA has been looked upon with suspicion by the Government, industry as well as the landed farming class for various reasons including inefficiency, leakages, corruption, rise in rural wages, cost escalation etc., a new report reveals that the programme reduced poverty among its participants between 2004-05 and 2011-12 by providing employment. The report entitled Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: A Catalyst for Rural Transformation has estimated that...

-The Indian Express   It has only managed to kill manufacturing and employment growth    In the 1950s, misapplied economic policies gave India one of the lowest growth rates in the world for 30 years, and left it behind East and Southeast Asia. Now another set of policies is completing its economic ruin. The architect of this is the RBI and its instrument of choice, the interest rate. Indian business has been begging for a...

-The Hindu India’s fundamental belief in democracy is often taken as a given, but it is instructive to understand the basis and strength of this belief. A new national survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies shows that in 2013, under half the country unequivocally preferred democracy as the best form of government in all cases; the outcome was the same when a similar survey was conducted in...