Caught in the middle of a maelstrom of controversies, the Planning Commission has been accused of being disconnected from ground realities. Its 12th Plan hopes to fix that. A short while ago, the Congress general secretary and scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, Rahul Gandhi, remarked that members of the Planning Commission are not in touch with the ground realities in India. He could have been somewhat influenced by his father, former...

The word ‘hunger’ does not appear in the 12th Plan Approach Paper even once, whereas according to the latest Global Hunger Index Report, India continues to be in the category of those nations where hunger is ‘alarming’. What is worse, India is one of the three countries where the hunger index between 1996 and 2011 has gone up from 22.9 to 23.7, while 78 out of the 81 developing countries...

The Congress rules state and the centre, but money set aside for Rajasthan’s malnourished tribal children does not reach dysfunctional crèches and other urgent needs Three-year-old Bagmati Sahariya lies listlessly on a string cot inside an unlit mud-and-thatched home in Baran district’s Amrod village, 292km south of Rajasthan’s capital Jaipur. When her father Janki Lal (36), a daily wage labourer, lifts her on his shoulder, her bony hands and legs dangle...

-Reuters   Chinese and Russian firms are the most likely to pay bribes while operating abroad, and the most corrupt sectors are public works contracts and construction, according to Transparency International's latest "Bribe Payers' index". China and Russia rank bottom, in 27th and 28th place respectively, in the 2011 index released on Wednesday, while the Dutch, Swiss, Belgians, Germans and Japanese get the top scores. Britain and the United States rank eighth and...

Preparing to fulfil one of the main demands of Anna Hazare, the UPA government is in the process of finalising the draft legislation for the Citizens Charter whereby every citizen will have the right to time-bound delivery of goods and services. Titled Citizens Charter for Committed Supply of Goods and Provision of Services by Public Authorities Bill, 2011, the draft legislation provides for multi-layered grievance redressal mechanism from panchayat to national...