-PTI   Government said a large number of complaints relating to implementation of its flagship MGNREGA scheme, including 61 cases related to underpayment of wages, have been received from all over the country.  Minister of State in the Rural Development Ministry Pradeep Jain 'Aditya' told Lok Sabha that 24 of the 61 complaints pertaining to under-payment of wages emanated from Uttar Pradesh alone.  The data showed that 14 such complaints were received from Rajasthan...

India is one of only four countries which, during the first half of 2011, requested Google to remove content on the basis that it was critical of the government. Google refused to comply. The other countries were Thailand and Turkey -- where Google restricted local users from accessing the offending content -- and the United States, where it refused. According to Google's Transparency Report for January to June 2011, the Internet...

A parliamentary committee is set to reject the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010, inflicting a severe blow to Unique Identification Authority of India chairman Nandan Nilekani and raising doubts about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's pet project. Former IT czar Nilekani, who holds cabinet minister rank as UIDAI chief, had been keen on the enactment of the Bill so that a statutory National Identification Authority could be established. The Bill,...

-The Times of India   The US continues to be the biggest donor for Indian NGOs, contributing a little less than one-third of the total Rs 10,337 crore received by various non-profit voluntary organizations in 2009-10. The latest statistics for the year 2009-10, disclosed by the home ministry in Parliament last week, showed that Germany took second spot, replacing UK which has traditionally been just behind the US in the list of donors...

India has scored 3.1 (down from 3.3 last year) on a scale - where 10 indicates very clean and zero, highly corrupt - of Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The CPI focuses on corruption in the public sector, involving public officials, civil servants or politicians.  The data sources used to compile the index include questions relating to the abuse of power and bribery of public officials, kickbacks in public procurement, embezzlement of...