-Tehelka Why is the northeastern state witnessing a spurt in Fatal road accidents? On 26 October, 37 people from Lakhimpur district of Assam boarded an Assam State Transport Corporation (ASTC) bus for a 390-km overnight journey to Guwahati. Most of them were part of a group that was planning to catch a train for Lucknow from Guwahati the next day and would have later proceeded to Varanasi, Mathura and Vrindavan on a...
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Executive Decision: How NDA is tweaking social sector laws -Nitin Sethi
-The Business Standard The NDA is using the discretionary powers allocated by the UPA government to either chip away at or metastasize social sector programmes The NDA government has found two ways to deal with the social sector programmes and policies it has got from UPA as legacy. Some of these the NDA wants shrunk or diminished and it's doing so through executive fiat, often in stealth mode. Then there are others...
More »Battered & bruised, Planning Commission loses more of its teeth -Sanjeeb Mukherjee
-The Business Standard Most key functions now handled by the finance ministry and other govt departments When Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently extended a Rs 8,000-crore central support for building roads in Jammu & Kashmir, Union Cabinet's approval for the big-ticket announcement came in barely 48 hours. Unlike in the past, the proposal did not get stuck in the corridors of the Planning Commission, a Nehruvian-era body. The Commission, which occupied the centre...
More »Nod to Dibang project shows why present forest clearance process needs to be scrapped -Chandra Bhushan
-Down to Earth Persisting with the current institutional arrangement will do more harm than good The manner in which the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has agreed to divert 4,578 hectares (ha) of prime forestland to construct the 3,000 MW Dibang multipurpose project (DMP) has yet again convinced me of the need to replace the present system of granting forest clearances. FAC, in its...
More »Internet.org wants to connect India's offline millions -Shilpa Kannan
-BBC Most parents would love to get their teenagers away from computers. But not in one poor suburb on the outskirts of Delhi, where youngsters are sent to learn. Sharing a few laptops between them, they're being taught some basic online skills - how to search for information, how to send money to their families in the villages and how to book train tickets. None of the children have access to computers in school....
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