-The Hindu Despite attempts at reform, frequent transfers of civil servants by loyalty-seeking politicians continue. Only a guarantee of tenure can end the menace. In April this year, the Haryana government transferred senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka for the second time in six months, or for the 44th time in his 22-year career. The use of transfers and postings in States as a means of harassing officers who are inconvenient because of...

Argumentative Indians are at it again! After sparring over the poverty line and the actual number of poor, India's renowned economists have fired up a fresh debate over the extent of malnutrition. In the earlier debate, the Planning Commission ‘reduced' poverty on paper disregarding NSSO and official committees, including the NCEUS, which determined that 77% Indians survived on less than Rs 20 a day. Columbia university economist Arvind Panagariya has...

-The Times of India The new office will give real time analysis of the government's social programmes, says Jairam Ramesh At a time when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is facing flak for a series of alleged corruption scams, the ministry of rural development that has an annual budget of approximately ` 800 billion has decided to go ahead and create an office of concurrent evaluation. The proposal for a...

-Firstpost.com On 7 May, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India presented to Parliament a Performance Audit of Storage Management and Movement of Foodgrains in Food Corporation of India. This report has gone largely unreported in the media, given that it does not contain any big number running into lakhs of crores like previous reports of the CAG did. But it clearly explains why the government of India is in no...

-Frontline   But in Modi's Gujarat the difference between development and darkness is all too visible to those who care to see. NARENDRA MODI may have won three consecutive elections and ruled Gujarat for more than a decade after he was posted there almost as a night watchman, to borrow a cricketing expression. He may have mobilised a massive fan following that is shouting to catapult him into the Prime Minister's post,...