-The Hindu   ‘Will work on full-time basis to evolve more objective standards of scrutiny' Amid criticism that industrialisation and economic growth were getting blocked due to delay in granting “environmental clearances” to industries, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday announced the government's plans to set up an independent regulator for giving environmental clearances. “We also hope to establish an independent regulator — the National Environment Appraisal and Monitoring Authority — soon. This...

If you buy electricity from Reliance Energy, you can now get any information from the parent company — Reliance Infrastructure — using the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. The state information commission has stated that suburban power supplier Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) comes under the ambit of the RTI Act. Justifying the order, the commission said though RInfra is a private company, Reliance Energy provides essential public service, and hence should come...

A war has broken out in some parts of east-central India, especially some regions of the Dandakaranya forests that span across the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh. Reportedly, there are thousands of Maoist guerrillas armed with sophisticated weapons confronting a vast array of paramilitary forces assembled by the government of India. Caught in the crossfire are millions of poor, marginalised and historically isolated adivasis. Their habitat, in which...

New tensions are emerging between the government and its think tank, with the food ministry making major changes to a National Advisory Council (NAC) draft of a new law slated to become the blockbuster social-security scheme of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s troubled second tenure. Key provisions of the national food security Bill, 2011, due to be introduced in Parliament’s next session starting 2 August, and estimated to cost the...

Pune : The state government’s exercise to map schools in the state to determine distribution as per population to make it easier to determine the number of schools and where they should be located to suit the Right to Education (RTE) Act targets has completed the second stage. As per the survey released on Monday, Pune district needs around 200 more schools as of now. There is a need of around...