-The Times of India PATNA: Call it the AAP effect. The Bihar government has decided to wage a war on corruption and 576 officers and employees are likely to be dismissed from service within two months over graft allegations. Chief minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday reviewed the progress in the investigation of corruption cases against these officers and employees. Since departmental proceedings against 187 of the 576 government employees are in the...

-The Hindu Business Line Clientelism - tying benefits to political choices - cannot work because voting preferences cannot be ascertained. Do parties and their local agents link access to government services and benefits from government welfare schemes to how voters vote, or are expected to vote? This political strategy, which social scientists refer to as clientelism, depends on a massive investment in local leaders who collect information on voters' party preferences, vote choices...

-Economic and Political Weekly     The pace of decline in infant mortality in India has quickened in recent years after the introduction of the National Rural Health Mission. However, the post-neonatal deaths have declined faster than the neonatal deaths despite the emphasis on preventing the latter in the health mission. Apart from a number of reasons, this is linked to the poor quality of the public health services in general, and the...

-The Hoot We can either spend another year discovering how much the old model is disintegrating or we can explore alternatives. But India has not developed a tradition as yet of not-for-profit journalism, says SEVANTI NINAN. Two recent developments at the New York Times and at Time Inc. which publishes Time magazine underscore the fact that financing has and will remain become the number one issue for the future of journalism as...

-Frontline The latest NSSO estimates put the number of slums in India at a much lower level than Census 2011. The latest National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) survey estimates the number of slums in India at 33,510 with 8.8 million households in them. The study, "Key indicators of urban slums in India", was conducted between July and December 2012. Census 2011's "Housing stock, amenities and assets in slums" puts the number of...