-The Telegraph   June 23, 2013: Ranchi is honoured at the e-India Governance Summit in Hyderabad for best use of information and communication technology in rural development June 2, 2014: The capital district is grappling with a backlog of more than 4,500 applications for online services such as issuing of birth, death and caste certificates The abysmal sign of regression has taken Ranchi district authorities, hitherto engrossed with one of the country's most historic...

-The Hindu   It is creditable that Narendra Modi seeks inspiration for his growth model from China and Japan rather than the U.S., which is a high-cost, specialist-driven model The old adage ‘health is wealth' was given legitimacy by no less a personage than Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who in 2000, chaired the World Health Organization's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (CMH). The CMH report brought forth indisputable evidence of the link between health,...

-Live Mint   Given the mandate that the BJP has received, it does have the political capital to support a new education agenda   The tactical and strategic brilliance of the campaign that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ran is visible in the election results. This also suggests that the BJP government is likely to start off on the task of governance with very clear ideas and in all likelihood with some specific plans....

-The Business Standard   A seven-point agenda to fix India's public services, and overcome poorly designed systems India's Achilles Heel remains its inability to deliver public services. India's aspiration to be a global economic power will be unrealised if this remains unsolved. Why is this problem so particularly acute? Is it political interference and corruption, poorly designed programmes and weak administration? Or a much deeper cultural problem of aversion to collective action, often...

-The Indian Express   MGNREGA is beset with failures of planning, execution, monitoring and accountability. This election season, we have seen the BJP seeking the people's mandate on the slogan "sab ka saath, sab ka vikas". The Congress harps primarily on a "we gave you" list. The first in this list is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA). The 11th Five Year Plan recognised that 30 crore people lived below the...