The National Advisory Council (NAC) wants the government to assess if its cash incentive scheme for the welfare of girls meets its objective of reducing gender selection, as there’s no official study yet to suggest that it does. As part of its recommendations for a national policy to stem India’s declining sex ratio, NAC also sought the formation of a communication and advocacy strategy and stronger laws to prevent the misuse...

The Chhattisgarh government does not yet know if the recorded message from Maoists on using their hostage Alex Paul Menon, a young bureaucrat, as a bargaining chip to get eight of their jailed comrades released, is authentic or not. A Maoist gang abducted Menon, a 32-year-old IAS officer of batch 2006, on Saturday evening at gunpoint from Manjhipara in Sukma, where he is the district collector, killing two guards who resisted...

A moratorium is not the magic bullet that can slay Bengal’s fiscal demons, several economists have said, pointing out that postponing the inevitable will be of little use unless backed up by a revenue mobilisation road map. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had yesterday set a 15-day deadline for the Centre to announce a three-year moratorium on the payment of interest on the loans Bengal had taken. “A moratorium on repayment obligations can...

-The Telegraph   The New York Times has reported that Wal-Mart, the US-based retail giant, hushed up an internal investigation sometime after the company was told of a bribery campaign to obtain licences and facilitate rapid expansion in Mexico. Some of the alleged instances of bribery are certain to ring a bell in India where it is not too difficult to bend rules for a price. The New York Times said its “examination...

-PTI   The suicide of a farmer in Vidarbha's Yavatmal district has put the Maharashtra government in a spot, as in his suicide note, he asked people not to vote forCongress and NCP, the ruling alliance partners in the state, as they don't "care" for farmers.  "Don't vote for the Congress and NCP; they don't care for farmers," 45-year-old Gajanan Ghotekar wrote in the suicide note before consuming pesticide last week at village...