-The Hindu India is the world's largest open air lavatory with over 620 million people practising open defecation in the country. Seeking to address this persisting problem, the UPA government has widened the scope of its flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to include works relating to rural sanitation in collaboration with the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyaan (NBA) Scheme. This interlinking is aimed at strengthening the base of rural...

-The Indian Express     Policy design should worry less about public versus private, and more about choice and accountability. The most noteworthy aspect of the Aam Aadmi Party's manifesto is the explicit focus on service delivery. This is what its government will be evaluated on, and attention has shifted from the AAP's political success to how it will deliver on these promises. The ideas below reflect learnings from over a decade of research...

-The Hindu Business Line     Whatever the criticisms against the UPA government may be, its effort to provide employment to large sections of the population under the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act must be lauded. Yet, after the initial success of the scheme, the enthusiasm of the Central government itself seems to have diminished in its second term in power. How palpable is the shift to lower gear? Representatives of the UPA...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In the election year and with more complaints of "poor condition" of highways pouring in, the road transport ministry wants finance ministry not to reduce the allocation for road maintenance. The ministry has asked finance minister P Chidambaram to avoid reduction of "non-planned" expenditure since the allocation of Rs 2,000 crore for upkeep of highways is inadequate. Sources said that highways minister wrote a letter to...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Access to education beyond higher secondary schooling is a mere 10% among the university-age population in India. This is the finding of a report "Intergenerational and Regional Differentials in Higher Education in India" authored by development economist, Abusaleh Shariff of the Delhi-based Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy and Amit Sharma, research analyst of the National Council of Applied Economic Research. The report...