-The Times of India   Education institutes in Rajasthan are working day and night to prepare guidelines for effective implementation of the recent Supreme Court order allowing disclosure of answer sheets under Right to Education Act 2009. The order has highlighted the poor situation of universities and colleges, where students face problems like staff crunch and infrastructure. Rajasthan Technical University is overburdened with work. To put examination and declaration of results on...

A survey conducted across nine states by the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Allahabad University suggests that the much maligned system has revived, prodded by politics, good governance and the apex court. It also found the poor to be averse to cash transfers Kotri is a mid-sized village in Desuri block (Pali district, Rajasthan), about 15 kilometres away from the nearest large bus stand and market place. We walked to...

The Planning Commission has approved irrigation projects worth an estimated Rs.2 trillion over the past year-and-a-half to bolster India’s food security, but analysts say most of the money will not be utilized because of corruption and poor execution. A total 141 projects costing Rs.1.3 trillion were cleared in 2010 alone, according to an internal Plan panel paper on investment clearance of flood control, major and medium irrigation projects and renovation and...

-DNA   Tamil Nadu government ordered a judicial probe into Sunday’s police firing in Ramanathapuram district which claimed seven lives. “What happened at Paramakudi was unfortunate and we are forming an inquiry commission under a retired high court judge to probe the whole incident,” Jayalalithaa told the state assembly on Monday. Seven people were killed and more than fifty persons injured when police opened fire to quell a riot unleashed by a group...

-The Times of India   The Haryana government introduced a policy to provide security to whistleblowers and RTI activists in the state if they report to police of specific threats. The state home department issued a notification on this on Tuesday. State home secretary Samir Mathur told TOI that the scale of security cover would depend on the nature of threat perception. "We can provide a cop or a gunman or even a...