-The Telegraph On a full-attendance day at a business process outsourcing centre in a village in Uttar Pradesh, 40 boys and girls work on computers, each of their desktops powered by rooftop solar panels that turn sunlight into electricity. Their workplace, a two-storey building, is the only structure in Sonari, a village of about 1,700 people and located about 50km from Lucknow on the road to Sitapur, where electricity is guaranteed nine...

Revised draft water policy allows for subsidy to the poor and in non-commercial farming Public outcry against indiscriminate pricing of water and privatisation of water delivery services has forced the Centre to back off on both counts in its revised draft of the new national water policy, a copy of which is available with The Hindu . The revised draft, that incorporates suggestions from the public as well as state governments, allows...

It is worrying that the Tendulkar method, chosen by the Planning Commission to calculate the poverty line in its latest figures, underestimates the levels of poverty while overestimating poverty reduction. The figures show that 29.8% or 360 million Indians were poor in 2009-10 as compared to 37.2% or 400 million in 2004-05. A poor person has been defined as one who spends R28 per day in urban areas and R22.5...

Bowing to the clamour for scrutiny of the accounts of private power distribution companies operating in the city, the Delhi government has finally approved their audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). According to a cabinet note, the government sanctioned an audit of the three discoms — BSES Yamuna and Rajdhani, and NDPL — “since inception.” The decision to get a CAG audit carried out was disclosed during a hearing in...

-The Telegraph A group of eminent individuals has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to initiate a “truly inclusive process of deliberation” to help formulate a rational public policy on nuclear power and genetically modified (GM) crops. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, a former Supreme Court judge, and 16 others, including former scientists and administrators, have also questioned Singh’s remarks to a US journal last month suggesting that foreign non-government organisations...