-The Hindu In 2009-10, 33% of PDS off-take of kerosene diverted for non-household use: report The findings of a confidential report, commissioned by the government and accessed exclusively by The Hindu, have revealed that allocated expenditures of social spending programmes are not reaching intended users and confirm leakages due to corruption. The capitation fees collected by private colleges, on management quota seats in professional courses, last year was around Rs 5,953 crore, the...

-Yojana   It would be good for the government not to pay much attention to the misconceived theories that public provisioning for the poor is equivalent to ‘populism' and would lead to higher fiscal deficit and low GDP. On the other hand, steps to improve public provisioning of basic necessities would definitely augur well for the overall growth of the economy by bringing down the levels of social and economic inequalities and...

-The Hindu   An improvement in sanitation and cleanliness will eliminate much of the difference in malnutrition between India and the rest of the world, and across Indian States Historically the greatest advances in longevity and mortality reduction have come not from treatment of individual disease but from public health. This includes modern drainage and sewerage systems (sewage treatment plants), drinking water systems that produce and deliver disease-free water and solid waste disposal...

-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...

-The Hindu India also has the worst gender inequality in the region In the two decades since the early 1990s when India liberalised its economy, countries like Nepal and Bangladesh have improved their human development indicators at a faster clip than India. Though India ranks marginally higher than many of its South Asian neighbours in the 2014 UNDP Human Development Report released on Thursday, the country has fallen behind most of its immediate...