-Live Mint   Given the mandate that the BJP has received, it does have the political capital to support a new education agenda   The tactical and strategic brilliance of the campaign that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ran is visible in the election results. This also suggests that the BJP government is likely to start off on the task of governance with very clear ideas and in all likelihood with some specific plans....

-Down to Earth   As India elects new government, the 12th Five Year Plan may no longer be pro-poor MUCH hope is pinned on the 12th Five Year Plan that was declared as the first health Plan by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, while drafting the Plan, also termed it "pro-poor" and promised the maximum budget for social welfare schemes. But as the Plan comes into force this...

-The Business Standard   A seven-point agenda to fix India's public services, and overcome poorly designed systems India's Achilles Heel remains its inability to deliver public services. India's aspiration to be a global economic power will be unrealised if this remains unsolved. Why is this problem so particularly acute? Is it political interference and corruption, poorly designed programmes and weak administration? Or a much deeper cultural problem of aversion to collective action, often...

-The Hindu   If Gujarat is a model, then the real toppers in development indicators, like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, must be supermodels In an earlier article published on this page ("The Gujarat Muddle," April 11, 2014), I pointed out that Gujarat's development achievements were hardly "model" class. This is pretty firm ground: the same point has been made by a long list of eminent economists. Yet confusion persists, so I decided to...

-The Times of India   Prem Das Rai, an MP from Sikkim, knew that development indicators from his state were exceptional. But his office didn't know how to showcase them. He reached out to Swaniti, a Delhi-based not-for-profit organization that has been working "consulting style" with parliamentarians. Their portal called Jigyasa aims to answer questions like Rai's. Rwitwika Bhattacharya, Swaniti's founder-CEO, was surprised at what they uncovered. "I always thought that the...