(Application deadline Monday December 31, 2012) Inclusive Media for Change, a CSDS-based initiative invites applications from journalists in English and Hindi for Inclusive Media Fellowships 2012-13. The Fellowships are given to bring spotlight on Rural Development and to promote democratic social change, particularly through empowerment, decentralization, convergence and good use of existing development schemes by Panchayats and local bodies. The Inclusive Media for Change runs a clearing house of ideas, information...

-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...

On November 23, the Supreme Court is slated to hear a damning report submitted by the court-appointed Commissioners on how politically connected contractors—legally barred from the ICDS program—might be subverting the social welfare measure in the state of Maharashtra.  The ICDS is an Rs 8000 crore government-funded program aimed at ending India’s abysmal rates of child malnutrition by supplying hot cooked meals and take home rations to children through decentralised women-run,...

-The Times of India Private companies have hijacked the government's flagship scheme to provide food to poor children and their mothers, the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), with contractors in Maharashtra alone controlling Rs 1,000 crore worth of supplies in contravention of Supreme Court orders, a report of the SC commissioners office has said. The SC orders bar contractors from supplying rations under the scheme. It only permits village communities, self-help groups...

-The Times of India The government would soon announce the appointment of the first National Cyber Security Coordinator (NCSC), stepping up its effort to put up a coordinated response to the various challenges in cyber space. Sources said Gulshan Rai, who presently heads the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), would be named the first NCSC. The coordinator's task would primarily be to coordinate among various agencies involved in cyber security. Rai...