-The Times of India NEW DELHI: If the dictum 'you can't manage what you can't measure' is true, then the government has an unsure grip over at least half the 13 flagship schemes worth nearly Rs 2 lakh crore annually, almost 80% of the total spend on central schemes. The government is unable to efficiently collate information to assess whether some of the 13 key flagship schemes are producing the results for...

-The United Nations United Nations independent experts today called on countries to ensure the post-2015 development agenda focuses on equality, social protection and accountability, noting that one billion people around the world are still living in poverty. "The rise of inequality has severely undermined the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs," the independent experts said in their message to Member States which will meet this week in New York to...

-The Hindu   The parliamentary committees on the howitzer scam and the stock market scandal protected the powerful and failed to fix accountability. The same is true in the spectrum case The current political situation brings back memories of 1989. The Prime Minister then was under a cloud in the Bofors scam. Many of his close associates like Lalit Suri and Ajitabh Bachchan were accused of wrong-doing. Today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and...

-The Hindu Tiruvannamalai: The field is almost dry but for brief wet patches. Yet, the paddy crop in it is prosperous with grain-rich panicles looking down the earth. The small plot of land located in a nondescript village near Polur thus shines in a State that still debates on whether its farmers can go for Kuruvai crop as there is no promise of water, by saying "You vie for gallons to...

-Frontline The Central government's proposal to hand over the supply of supplementary nutrition to NGOs in the name of "community participation" is surely an invitation for private profiteering on the back of this supposedly public scheme. ENSURING safe and healthy conditions for the reproduction of the population is obviously the most fundamental requirement of any society. So the progress of a society can be determined (and indeed is routinely judged) by the...