Performance indicators and pink slips are no longer the domain of grueling corporate jobs. Something fundamental is changing in public universities of India that have always provided their teachers job security and the comfort of fixed work hours. The government funded Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) plans to recruit faculty on their Hyderabad campus on a contractual basis. It is only after a regular annual assessment, which includes students' evaluation,...

KJS Ahluwalia, a mine owner in Orissa, is the country's top taxpayer in the individual category for 2010-11. Two other mine owners from the state, Prasanta Ahluwalia and Indrani Pattnaik, also figure in the top 10 taxpayers' list. Income tax officials in Rourkela said Ahluwalia, owner of an iron ore mine and a mini steel plant in Keonjhar, paid Rs 50 crore as advance tax in the last quarter. He paid...

Wants limit to be raised to 49% Keen to enter the growing insurance sector, U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett on Friday wondered if India would raise the FDI limit in the sector to 49 per cent. The U.S.-based company is keenly watching the developments regarding further opening of the sector to foreign investment. Mr. Buffett, whose group Berkshire Hathaway recently entered the Indian insurance market, called on IRDA Chairman J. Harinarayan here and...

The Nagla elementary school in this north Indian town looks like many other rundown government schools. Sweater-clad children sit on burlap sheets laid in rows on cold concrete floors. Lunch is prepared out back on a fire of burning twigs and branches. But the classrooms of Nagla are a laboratory for an educational approach unusual for an Indian public school. Rather than being drilled and tested on reproducing passages from...

As government, corporates seek to engage with NGOs, they gain new significance Brave NGO World?     * The Planning Commission is courting NGOs for policy inputs, views on how to make plans work     * NGOs and local activism forced govt to stall Vedanta, Posco plans     * NGO opposition to snacks being served in schools changed plans to scrap hot meals     * NGO have made the government rethink the Polavaram dam project    ...