-PTI Chandigarh: Punjab government will provide water connections and toilets to every rural household in the next six years, with the World Bank sanctioning a loan of Rs 1,540 crore for water and sanitation facilities in the state. The World Bank recently approved a Rs 1,540 crore loan for the 'Punjab Rural Water and Sanitation Sector Improvement Project' to help the state improve its water and sanitation services and also reduce open...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The CIC has told the Centre and the state governments to enforce RTI in private hospitals and ensure they provide medical records to patients on a daily basis. In a scathing order against Fortis Hospital, Vasant Kunj, which had refused to give records of a deceased patient to his son, the transparency watchdog has directed that daily disclosure would prevent undesirable practices of altering records after...

-The Asian Age The much-quoted sentence, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics", was attributed to the 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli by American author Mark Twain. Although researchers could never find such a statement in any written work of Disraeli, the sentence gained universal popularity to signify how economists and other number-crunchers use the "persuasive power" of figures to make a political point or...

-The Telegraph Singur, the potato bowl of Bengal, appears to have landed in trouble again. Not on account of unwilling farmers grieving over their lost assets, but on account of overproduction by the ones who didn't lose their land. Excess supply of the crop has pulled down prices, leading indebted farmers to slither down the precipice. According to media reports, matters have come to a dismal pass, with a section of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The yearly wage revision for the rural job guarantee scheme has for the first time missed its April 1 deadline, with the government having sat for nine months on expert advice for a sizeable hike. Sources said the rural development ministry would next week notify an interim wage increase, based on the existing formula for yearly revisions, while the finance ministry weighs the expert panel's July recommendations. There are...