-Ideas for India MNREGA – the largest public works programme in the world – completed 10 years this month. In this article, Inayat Anaita Sabhikhi, Project Officer, United Nations Development Programme, at the Ministry of Rural Development, summarises evidence on MNREGA from four recent reports of international and national organisations. She contends that MNREGA’s high global Rankings among social security programmes and the positive evidence on its impact should boost efforts...

-Down to Earth The debt in rural households is higher, even though their total assets are lesser than urban households   A new survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) shows that rural households have higher debts than their urban counterparts. At the same time, an urban household owns more than double the asset than that of a rural household. A rural household, on an average, owned assets of Rs 10...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Modi administration wants to make all government services available on mobile phones in the next five years so that citizens don't have to visit offices, making it much easier for them to get their work done efficiently and conveniently. The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), which reports to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), proposed this last week in a report prepared along...

-AP Transparency noted that in places like Guatemala, Sri Lanka and Ghana, citizen activists have "worked hard to drive out the corrupt." Public-sector corruption is still a major problem around the world but more countries are improving than worsening and the United States and United Kingdom have reached their best Rankings ever, an anti-corruption watchdog said Wednesday. Denmark remained at the top of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, a closely watched global barometer,...

-Livemint.com If the govt is serious about boosting innovation, it should invest in higher education instead of rolling back scholarships Mumbai: India has no dearth of innovation initiatives, both in the government and the private sector. Yet, the country continues to lag other developing nations. A recent survey called Contributors and Detractors: Ranking Countries’ Impact on Global Innovation, conducted by a US-based think tank, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), ranks...