-The Indian Express AIIB meeting presents an opportunity to redefine the parameters of development. Budha Ismail Jam, a fisherman from Kutch, will be unknown to most delegates at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s (AIIB) annual meeting being held in Mumbai on June 25-26. Yet, Jam’s story has far-reaching implications if infrastructure projects are to be more focused on the well-being of people rather than the profit margins of investors. The third annual meeting...

-The Indian Express The bullet train project, planned after discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe, is being built with a Rs 88,000-crore soft loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Palghar: As politicians across party lines gathered on stage together in Palghar on Sunday calling for the ambitious Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project to be cancelled, they repeatedly cited the word ‘vikas’, qualifying it with the...

-The Indian Express Also on the CEGC member-list is Sudhir Aggarwal, a BJP member who is “founder-president, Confederation of Voluntary Organizations” and who describes himself as a “swayam sevak since childhood” on his website. New Delhi: The editor of RSS publication Panchjanya, members of a few Hindu spiritual organisations and the CEO of a drone company are among people drafted as “non-official members from various states” in the apex body responsible for...

-The Hindu Rs. 8,000-Rs. 10,000 crore to be spent, says Gadkari. Union Water Resources Minister Nitin Gadkari said the government will spend ?8,000 to ?10,000 crore this year to ensure that at least 70% of the Ganga will be clean by next May. The government has only spent ?4,500 crore since 2015 when the ?20,000-crore tranche for cleaning the 2,500-km long river was operationalised. “This year we have sent a note [to the Finance...

  One of the salient features of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005) is that there are provisions in it to ensure transparency and accountability. Section 17(2) of the MGNREGA says that the gram sabha shall conduct regular social audits of all the projects under the scheme taken up within the gram panchayat (GP). In addition to that, Section 17(3) of the MGNREGA states that the GP shall make...