-Business World Wind, water and the sun can help India cut dependence on coal and gas For India, energy security has never seemed more real, more urgent than now. Forty per cent of the country’s 1.2-billion populace is yet to have access to electricity. Even those getting grid supply suffer poor quality of power. Towns see power cuts more than half the day. The country’s energy deficit, according to the Central Electricity...

-The Indian Express The Comptroller and Auditor General of India Vinod Rai told a meeting of the World Economic Forum that the “brazenness” with which government decisions were being taken is “actually appalling”. A day before that, he had told students in Shillong that the “suffering majority had begun to speak up”. In times when corruption is the central issue and the government evidently suffers from a credibility deficit, the statements...

-The Economic Times There has been a change of guard at the power ministry and Jyotiraditya Scindia, the new man in charge, has described his task as daunting. To simplify the many complexities, it's worth keeping in mind an adage that's particularly apt for rural India: Nothing is more expensive than no power. While on one hand there are thousands of villages that still remain to be electrified, on the other even...

-The Times of India Unjustified judicial intervention could compromise the good the right to information is doing Perhaps the biggest contribution of our Parliament towards promoting greater accountability in independent India is the enactment of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. If, as they say, information is power, then the RTI Act has been a veritable 'Brahmastra' in the hands of the Indian public. It has been extremely successful in...

-The Business Standard The rural jobs scheme can boost productivity in farm and textiles sector. There is mounting evidence that Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) of 2005, under which 100 days of guaranteed wage employment a year was to be provided to target households, is failing to meet its stated objectives. The total cumulative expenditure since 2005 under the MGNREGA is officially estimated to be Rs 1,50,000 crore, and the...