Health ministry instead plans to roll out an integrated national health survey; experts question decision   The Union government has decided to discontinue the country’s most reliable and widely tracked health survey, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the fourth round of which was to be conducted in 2012-13, in a move that has been criticized by development experts. The ministry of health and family welfare is instead planning to roll out an...

-The Hindu ‘This will ensure greater transparency in decision-making' In a significant ruling, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has said reports of all expert committees and commissions, constituted by the government, should be made public to ensure greater transparency in decision-making. Allowing a petition seeking a copy of a report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), the Commission has rejected the contention of the Public Information Officer (PIO) that the disclosure...

-The Pioneer Almost 95.2 per cent of schools are not compliant with the complete set of Right to Education (RTE) infrastructure indicators. These shocking statistics came to light in the two-day RTE Stocktaking Convention which was recently held. The Convention aimed to address the pending gaps and detect the reasons behind the schools missing out on the deadline to meet the basic standard of education as highlighted by the RTE. The RTE...

Civil society pressure may have forced the government to keep proposed changes in the Right To Information (RTI) Act in abeyance but the information officers are quietly implementing them.   The government has proposed restrictions on RTI applications that only one issue can be raised in one application and it should not be more than 250 words. But, it had to withdraw amendments following objection by RTI proponents such as National Advisory...

One would expect a debate such as the current one on poverty estimates to be conducted with a serious exploration of its various facets. However, instead of a comprehensive, fact-driven exploration, the debate has yielded aspersions on the intellectual honesty of academicians. Although given its electoral connotations, one does expect political biases to creep into the debate, the barrage of criticism hurled at the Planning Commission, over its affidavit in...