-The Telegraph Jorhat: The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India, will implement its CSIR 800 mission at Kaliabor in Nagaon district. The council, which is the largest publicly funded research and development institute in the country, in a change of role has launched CSIR 800 to give a better quality of life to 800 million people of India through scientific and technological intervention. The mission will be launched in 28 clusters of...

-The Hindu As cities expand and markets keep fuel prices high, Indians are demanding better public transport. The States must deliver, but they are only inching ahead. In the chorus of angry voices against the horrific gang rape of a paramedic student on a moving bus in the national capital on December 16 last, one issue that quickly became apparent was the state of public transport in urban areas. The shocking incident...

-The Hindu Biomass cookstoves and solar lighting improve the health of women and are creating business models that empower them Around the world three billion people have no access to modern cooking fuels. They depend mostly on direct burning of solid biomass for cooking and heating. The smoke from these rudimentary stoves causes some four million deaths annually, destroys millions of tonnes of crops and leads to global warming and large-scale regional...

-The Hindu Some hydel projects that claim exemption from environmental clearance on the basis of size provide a misleading picture of their impact Why would more than four gram panchayats, environmental activists from three States, the presiding swami of the Subramanya Temple, botanists, fisheries scientists, and institutions like the Indian Institute of Science oppose a small hydel project in a remote corner of the Western Ghats in Karnataka? Aren't small hydel projects...

-The Indian Express No magic pill solution or quick fix can make up for basic administrative deficiencies In a review of Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen's latest book in the Financial Times (July 12, 2013), historian Ramachandra Guha questions whether the Indian state is "up to the job of doing more to tackle poverty". Mainstream debates about the persistence of poverty and pervasive failures in public service delivery in India tend to...