-IPS News SUNDARBANS: November is the cruelest month for landless families in the Indian Sundarbans, the largest single block of tidal mangrove forest in the world lying primarily in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. There is little agricultural wage-work to be found, and the village moneylender's loan remains unpaid, its interest mounting. The paddy harvest is a month away, pushing rice prices to an annual high. For those like Namita Bera,...
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SCs, STs form less that 10% of Central higher bureaucracy, says Personnel Dept
-The Hindu Business Line Despite long years of affirmative action in India, the higher bureaucracy at the Centre has less than 10 per cent representation from the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), and not a single one from Other Backward Classes (OBC). Higher bureaucracy refers to officers at the level of Secretary, Special Secretary, Additional Secretary and Joint Secretary. According to a written reply by the Department of Personnel and...
More »‘Indian women hardly have any say in decision making’ -Mahendra Singh
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Women empowerment may be the key slogan for every government since independence, but the findings of a government report show women still lag way behind men in having a say in decision making and in their participation in economic activity. The Central Statistics Office (CSO)'s publication "Women and Men in India 2014" found that women occupied seven out of 45 ministerial positions in the Narendra Modi's...
More »Setting diesel free is a good idea -Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
-TheGoan.net As had been anticipated, on October 18, the Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to decontrol the prices of diesel, the most widely-used petroleum product in the country. Riding on an unexpected fall in world prices of crude oil, the government was able to simultaneously announce a sharp fall in consumer prices of diesel by Rs 3.37 per litre (in Delhi). But the decision...
More »Right reasons to get hitched -TV Somanathan and Gulzar Natarajan
-The Indian Express A headlong rush into PPPs will only leave a trail of disputes, renegotiations, corruption. The conventional wisdom in India on public-private partnerships (PPPs) is that they help governments raise capital to meet large infrastructure investment targets. But this rationale for promoting PPPs does not stand on strong foundations. There are three potential reasons for supporting PPPs. First, they enable governments to access more capital without visibly breaching fiscal targets. In...
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