-Down to Earth MGNREGA budget has declined in real terms over the years, despite claims of “highest ever” allocations In 2004, before India had any legal welfare entitlements for the informal sector, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, was furiously debated in the Parliament and the media. The aim of this legislation was to address the crisis of under employment and unemployment in the rural economy and provide job opportunities through public works...

-Outlook India's neighbour, Pakistan, stands fourth in the list with 40 per cent bribery rate. If the statistics furnished by the Transparency International (TI), an anti-corruption global civil society organisation, are anything to go by, India has a long way ahead to fulfil one of the many objectives as told by the current Indian government - defeating the malice of corruption. A recent survey by the Transparency International states that India is the...

-The Indian Express Section 375 of the IPC dealing with rape makes an exception for such instances within marriages and holds that “sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape” STATING THAT what “may appear to be marital rape” to a wife “may not appear so to others”, the central government took a stand against criminalising marital rape, in...

-TheWire.in If the legislature is serious about introducing gender parity in personal laws, it should not focus all its energies on one particular religion. In light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to abolish instant triple talaq, a number of ostensible protectors of Muslim women in Indian politics came out in open support of the decision, lauding the cleansing of this oppressive religious practice. Of course, the government was the first to...

-The Hindu The political scientist on the danger to India’s checks and balances, and the perils of the democratisation of mediocrity in universities Professor of political science and a holder of the Madan Lal Sobti Chair, Devesh Kapur has been director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary India at University of Pennsylvania since 2006. Mr. Kapur, who recently co-edited Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design, says our public universities...