-Frontline.in Four years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of the Namami Gange project, the river remains as dirty as ever. WHILE in Varanasi to file his nomination papers for the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi, then the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial nominee, had declared with his characteristic bravado, “I have not come here on my own. I have been invited by mother Ganga.” He said it was his...

-Business Standard As a matter of fact, the study found that people are so unsatisfied with the DBT system being piloted by the government that they want to return to the previous system of grains distribution People in Nagri Block in Jharkhand have to wait for around 13 hours on average to be able to withdraw cash received through the direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme and buy rice from the public distribution...

-Newsclick.in Despite providing capital for an economically and socially disastrous project, World Bank’s International Financial Corporation has claimed immunity from legal action. A fishing community in Kutch, Gujarat, has moved several courts in the United States seeking damages from the International Financial Corporation (IFC). The IFC is the private investment lending arm of the World Bank Group, and is hiding from legal action behind an immunity law. The claims were dismissed by the...

-TheWire.in The Right to Information Act has not been implemented in letter and spirit, which is why the number of RTI appeals and complaints with the Central Information Commission is growing. The Narendra Modi government has made an oft-repeated commitment to promote transparency and participatory decision-making processes to contain the scourge of corruption in public life. While the Right to Information (RTI) Act is used for promoting free flow of information, the...

-Frontline.in The Assembly elections have put under intense scrutiny Narendra Modi’s Gujarat model of development which is touted as worthy of replication throughout the country. Audit reports of the CAG provide ample evidence of it being inefficient, corrupt and not beneficial to the common people. THE standard indicators of development, as is understood in theory and practice, comprise a range of indices, and not necessarily the level of private investment in...