-PTI Several Union Ministers, including Vijay Goel, Prakash Javadekar, Nirmala Sitaraman and Sushma Swaraj, have not cleared dues on their official bungalows till February, the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry said. Replying to an RTI query, the Ministry said Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Union Minister of State for Development of North Eastern Region Jitendra Singh also have outstanding payments on their bungalows. These dues concern furniture and other things...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Mumbaikars can now drink water straight from the tap, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC’s) hydraulic engineer Ashok Tawadia said. According to BMC, an average 0.7% of water samples collected daily across Mumbai between April 2018 and March 2019 tested positive for Coliform bacteria, a group of microorganisms present in water bodies that indicate water may not be fit for drinking. This is far better than the WHO...

-The Times of India GURUGRAM (Haryana): In four years since he has been the chief minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar has made 7,306 public announcements about development works in the state between November 2014 and November 2018, out of which 2,113 (29.82%) have been fulfilled. This was revealed by the government in a reply to an RTI filed by a city-based NGO. Other revelations include the number of announcements that cannot...

-Livemint.com Contrary to the assumption that the middle class is an urban phenomenon, a considerable segment of the Indian middle class resides in rural areas, finds a new study The size of the Indian middle class has always been at the heart of the narrative around India’s economic development. And yet the term middle class remains arbitrarily defined with estimates of its size and characteristics varying significantly based on subjective notions of...

-The Hindu If it’s the government’s case that NSSO figures are suspect, what has it based policy decisions on? Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri said last week, “we definitely have a data crisis,” and blamed academics for creating a “false narrative”. Yet, at the heart of the data crisis in India is the Central government, which has been holding back important data. Most recently, it did...