-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Niti Aayog is throwing open its doors to private sector experts to join the government think tank at all levels, including at secretary rank. Unlike in the past, when the bureaucracy would walk into government organisations, Niti Aayog's policy will ensure that officers have to compete for jobs with applicants from the private sector or academic institutions. Currently, top jobs are virtually reserved for officers from...

-The Times of India A year after the UPA presented a white paper on black money in Parliament, spelling out strategy to curb generation of illicit money and preventing its offshore flight, one of the most potent weapons created to tackle the menace and bring offenders to book - theincome tax department's Directorate of Criminal Investigation (DCI) - stands dismantled and powerless. The last search-and-survey operation, better known as I-T raids,...

-DNA Top corporates and businessmen appear to be in a rush to defend themselves following a report in New Delhi-based tabloid Mail Today that they funded Arvind Kejriwal-led India Against Corruption (IAC). The Tata Social Welfare Trust clarified that while it had indeed made a grant of Rs 25 lakh a year to Kejriwal’s NGO, the Ghaziabad-based Public Cause Research Foundation (PCRF) beginning 2009, the money was not meant to be used...

-The Indian Express A group of teachers at Jamia Milia Islamia University has put together a compilation of terror cases that failed to hold up in court, all of these built by the Delhi Police Special Cell around youths they had arrested and described as terrorists. Titled “Framed, Damned and Acquitted: Dossiers of a Very Special Cell” and compiled from court judgments and media reports, the study by the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity...

CHENNAI: Government officials in Tamil Nadu can now sit in their air-conditioned offices and keep tabs on clogged up water bodies and channels in remote villages using satellite technology. Criticized by many for corruption and inefficiency, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been given a scientific make-over in the state with GIS (geographic information system) mapping being used to organize the works as well as to...