-India Water Portal Deconstructing the traditional narrow engineering based policy discourses around floods and droughts and connecting them to social and cultural realities is the need of the hour in India. India has witnessed extreme weather conditions this year. While parts of the north and south have battled drought like conditions this summer, the northeast and western coastal areas witnessed heavy rains and floods. While climate change has been highlighted as one...

-ThePrint.in When you put the reports by HRD ministry and CMIE survey together, you are looking at a simmering volcano. While Indians were busy celebrating the country’s global triumph and commiserating about its terrestrial adventures, two Important reports went almost unnoticed. The eighth annual All India Survey on Higher Education 2018-19 was released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development last week. It coincided with the release of four-monthly report ‘Unemployment in...

-The Hindu The credibility of the RBI, the CSO and the Niti Aayog has taken a beating in recent times due to political interference Nobel laureate Oliver Williamson pondered over an Important question, around 25 years ago: “Why are the ambitions of economic development practitioners and reformers so often disappointed?” According to him, “one answer is that development policymakers and reformers are congenital optimists. Another answer is that good plans are regularly...

-The Hindu Conversations between governments and citizens and among citizens themselves are crucial in a democracy A very instructive passage on the difference in norms of debate among ancient Indian scholars, on the one hand, and kings and their subjects, on the other is found in the ancient text, Milinda-pañha. It records an exchange between the Indo-Greek king Milinda (Menander) and the Buddhist monk N?gasena. When the king fails to understand a point...

-The Indian Express Defence is a national public good. It is the primary responsibility of the Centre. The amendment to the terms of reference (TOR) issued to the Fifteenth Finance Commission asking it to examine “..a separate mechanism for funding of defence and internal security ought to be set up and if so, how such a mechanism could be operationalised,” has triggered some suggestions on the need to have a relook...