-The Indian Express   With UPA constituent Trinamool Congress today joining the Opposition in critising the Communal Violence Bill, the Union government said that the legislation as drafted by the National Advisory Council (NAC) was not final. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was among the eight CMs who stayed away from the National Integration Council (NIC) meeting held in Delhi today, with communal violence on its agenda. Narendra Modi (Gujarat), Nitish Kumar...

What is government planning to do with the Public Distribution System (PDS)? The answer lies in an old adage: Give a dog bad name and hang him! The common impression is that the PDS is not working because of pilferage and hence it is taken as a foregone conclusion that it needs to be replaced with cash transfer. Two empirical studies conducted recently, one of them by noted economists Jean Dreze...

Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are among the Indian states that have failed to name an ombudsman to handle grievances and prevent graft related to the central government’s flagship rural jobs programme, even two years after they were directed to do so. Only 15 of the nation’s 28 states have appointed the ombudsmen, according to the ministry of rural development. Assam, Haryana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu also haven’t appointed the watchdog. Setting up...

India should facilitate private sector growth in higher education, particularly in technical subjects, and should explore and develop innovative public-private partnerships (PPP) in the 12th Five-year Plan In a potential game-changer for India’s education sector, the Planning Commission has suggested that the country allow establishing institutes of higher learning that could be run for profit. “The not-for-profit tag in higher education sector should perhaps be re-examined in a more pragmatic manner so...

Even as the state tries to provide a corruption-free government with the Lokseva Guarantee Bill, a similar venture by it earlier has fallen by the wayside. With no chief information commissioner (CIC) in the state for the past five months the much-trumpeted Right To Information (RTI) Act, which aims to bring in transparency, has almost become defunct. Incidentally, Rajasthan had taken the first steps in bringing this law in the...