-The Indian Express Having faced criticism over objectionable content in school textbooks, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has ruled that all 14,000 institutions affiliated to it must stick to NCERT and CBSE textbooks. All schools will also have to set up websites declaring relevant information, including details pertaining to textbooks being used. Making these conditions for affiliation, the board recently amended its affiliation bylaws to ensure that only properly...

-The Hindu   Investment in a scheme that guarantees rural employment with minimum wages should be seen as complementary and not alternative to development activities A recent paper by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has argued that the "push" factors of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are not as important as the economic growth "pull" factors, for increasing agricultural wages. The paper has received wide media...

-The Hindu Business Line A new CAG report offers valuable insights into the likely implications of implementing the proposed food security law. The National Food Security Bill (NFSB) couldn't be passed in the Parliament session that ended last week, despite a spirited promotional pitch by its proponents - including Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen. Last week also saw the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) table its report on "Performance Audit of...

-The Hindu In the eye of the storm for funding corporate warehousing projects on terms far softer than those offered to poor farmers, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is now blaming the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the transgressions. Following a story in The Hindu, (‘As farmers suffer, NABARD offers soft loans to corporates, ' December 10, 2012), NABARD came under...

-The Hindu With general elections just a year away, the Union government is keen to project the proposed installation of around 3,000 mobile towers in nine Naxal-affected States as one of the major achievements of the the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. For the Rs.3,000-crore project that would give mobile coverage to India's most backward districts and remote villages covering over 80 Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected districts, the DoT wants Prime Minister...