-CivilSocietyOnline.com For the past decade state governments have launched a series of Internet-based initiatives to deliver services more efficiently. Technology has been seen as the best way of bypassing red tape and corruption in the system to reach the poor directly with benefits. Beneficiaries are identified through biometrics and a series of tech solutions like smart cards, micro ATMs and so on. The result of these efforts is that India is...

-The Times of India New Delhi: Amid predictions of good monsoon rainfall, Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh on Tuesday said the country would definitely see higher foodgrain production during 2016-17 even as he made it clear that there is no plan to tax agricultural income. While giving his reassurance, he said the Centre will probe if there was any anomaly in the system with regard to undeclared incomes. He said he...

At the Labour Line office of Aajeevika Bureau situated at Syphon Chouraha on Bedla Road in Udaipur, Santosh Poonia said that 12,926 calls were received by his office between August 2011 and March 2016, out of which almost 37 percent were payment-related grievance calls. During the same time-span, 2,008 payment-related cases (as received by the Labour Line office) could be settled. Poonia, who is Programme Manager (Legal Education and Aid...

-The Hindu Jaipur: Ironic though it may sound, a unique memorial celebrating the Right to Information has come up in the Beawar town of Rajasthan — where the RTI movement had started 20 years ago — at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the State has opted to delete chapters on the evolution of RTI campaign and law from its school textbooks. Hundreds of people from all walks of...

-Hindustan Times With progressively increasing severity of rising temperatures and rain deficits over two consecutive years – 2014 and 2015, the Great Indian Drought was always coming. The India Meteorological Department, ministry of home affairs, the ministry of water resources, the Ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare office, and the National Disaster Management Authority knew it. The question is, what did we do with this knowledge? Six hundred million of India’s 1.2 billion...