-The Business Standard   A seven-point agenda to fix India's public services, and overcome poorly designed systems India's Achilles Heel remains its inability to deliver public services. India's aspiration to be a global economic power will be unrealised if this remains unsolved. Why is this problem so particularly acute? Is it political interference and corruption, poorly designed programmes and weak administration? Or a much deeper cultural problem of aversion to collective action, often...

-The Business Standard   Or, why our subsidy and tax policies have been almost exactly wrong Thomas Piketty's seminal book on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, comes at a fortuitous time. Although inequality has been a well-discussed issue in India for some time now, the success of the book contributes by sharpening the debate. It complements the McKinsey Global Institute's (MGI) report titled "From poverty to empowerment: India's imperative for jobs, growth,...

-The Indian Express   A new study on the Dal Lake could point the way in dealing with ecological challenges   A multi-dimensional group of experts from the Bangalore-based biodiversity and environment think tank, ATREE (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment), embarked on a wide-ranging study to save Srinagar's Dal Lake. The ATREE team of experts includes a water quality scientist, a hydrologist, a sociologist, an institutional management and governance expert and...

-The Times of India   BANGALORE: It's been a year since the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act was passed; one of Parliament's several responses to increasing attacks on women. The act has been described by some as one of the most exacting in the world, especially with regard to the responsibilities it places on employers. To understand what has changed since the act came into being, TOI spoke to a...

-The Hindu Business Line     Underpaid and overworked, India's nurses are in need of better treatment from the society they care for   Florence Nightingale called nursing the finest of fine arts. But Molly Sibbichan would have disagreed. On March 16, Sunday, the 42-year-old nurse, employed with the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi, hanged herself inside her south Delhi home.   Molly's suicide note said work pressure and stress pushed her to kill...