-The Indian Express A headlong rush into PPPs will only leave a trail of disputes, renegotiations, corruption. The conventional wisdom in India on public-private partnerships (PPPs) is that they help governments raise capital to meet large infrastructure investment targets. But this rationale for promoting PPPs does not stand on strong foundations. There are three potential reasons for supporting PPPs. First, they enable governments to access more capital without visibly breaching fiscal targets. In...

-The Hindu   An improvement in sanitation and cleanliness will eliminate much of the difference in malnutrition between India and the rest of the world, and across Indian States Historically the greatest advances in longevity and mortality reduction have come not from treatment of individual disease but from public health. This includes modern drainage and sewerage systems (sewage treatment plants), drinking water systems that produce and deliver disease-free water and solid waste disposal...

-The Indian Express Nilekani's efforts to convince the NDA of Aadhaar's benefits appear to have paid off. A half-hour meeting that Aadhaar architect Nandan Nilekani had with Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month followed by a conferring couple of days later with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has reportedly sorted the go-no go situation for the ambitious UIDAI project. The two meetings and a third that Modi held with his key...

-The Indian Express This year's edition of the Human Development Report contains a set of practical recommendations The 2014 Human Development Report (HDR) draws attention to the urgent need to address human vulnerabilities and build resilience as conditions for accelerating and sustaining progress. Human insecurity stems from not only low and uncertain incomes, but from many other sources, including inadequate access to health, food and shelter, unsafe environments, and inadequate protection of...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: The ration card - the government issued booklet for availing of subsidized food under the public distribution service - is set to lose its privileged status as a valid document for opening bank accounts. Aadhaar is now set to become the single universal document for opening a bank account in India. In a circular dated July 17 addressed to banks, the RBI said that it has revised...