-PTI NEW DELHI: FCI, the nodal agency for procurement and distribution of foodgrains, has sufficient stock to ensure smooth implementation of the landmark food security law, Food Minister K V Thomas said today. After a review of Food Corporation of India, he expressed satisfaction that it has been taking steps to modernise the public distribution system and said that it has sufficient stock to meet the requirement under the new food law,...

-PTI President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday gave his assent to the Pension Bill, which provides for investment of funds in equity market and opens the sector to up to 26 per cent FDI. The long-pending Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill was passed by Parliament on September 6. "The PFRDA Bill, 2013 has received the assent of the President of India," an official statement said. The legislation provides subscribers a wide choice...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The recent communal violence in Muzaffarnagar has once again brought home the danger of playing politics with religious beliefs. In the past eight years, there have been nearly a thousand communal incidents across the country. While the casualties are countable - 965 dead and over 18,000 injured - the toll on India's economic and social fabric is beyond any metric. More than half of these...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: More than three years after the implementation of the RTE Act and an expenditure of over Rs 46,282.11 crore on school infrastructure, around 1.28 lakh out of 10,75,407 government elementary schools across the country still don't have toilets and over 61,000 lack drinking water facilities. According to the District Information System for Education 2011-12, Bihar has 18,169 schools without lavatories, the highest among states. Andhra Pradesh...

-Kafila.org This fact-finding exercise was coordinated by the CENTRE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS. Team members were the human rights activist and former civil servant Harsh Mander; former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E N Rammohan; Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University; National Integration Council member John Dayal; senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and CPA Director and senior editor Seema Mustafa. Introduction and Overview The first impression of the Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green...