-Deccan Herald MoF wants more transparency and public involvement For the first time, the government has decided to go for crowdsourcing in the Budget-making exercise and invited suggestions from the public for India’s Budget to be presented in February-March next year. The step has been taken to infuse more transparency into the Budget-making and increase people‘s participation in the mammoth exercise. “In order to infuse more transparency into the Budget-making exercise and to have...

-The Indian Express The steady state efficiency of healthcare needs to be raised so that crises like this one can be avoided. In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty; all are responsible.” While these words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel ring true for many social and political ills that appall us, they are also a timely reminder of our collective responsibility to correct the pathetic state of...

-DNA The Centre has always claimed that the country has a robust regulatory mechanism Busting the claims of the Indian government and scientists that the country has a robust regulatory mechanism to test genetically modified (GM) crops, toxic loopholes are emerging. From 2008 to 2014, only 39 of the 133 GM crop field trials were properly monitored, leaving the rest for unknown risks and possible health hazards to common people. Documents accessed...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Shortly after a controversy erupted over government's proposal to investigate on every message that an individual will send via WhatsApp, SMS, or Google Hangouts, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology clarified in a draft that social media websites and applications will be exempted from the purview of the Encryption Policy. According to the draft Posted by Deity, there are certain categories of encryption products that...

-The Hindu Salem (Tamil Nadu): The successful functioning of the anganwadi centres being run under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) have helped over 3.18 lakh children to improve their healthcare in the district. Officials said that there are 2,696 anganwadi centres in all the 22 blocks in the district. Supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check-up, referral services, pre-school non-formal education and nutrition and health education are rendered to adolescent girls in the age...