-The Business Standard The default approach to reform - minimalistic and confused - will lead India into crisis  It is encouraging that the Planning Commission has undertaken an innovative exercise in scenario building for the country as part of the Approach to the 12th Five-Year Plan. The results are available in a document titled “Scenarios: Shaping India’s Future”, which can be found on the Planning Commission’s website. The merit of the document...

-DNA "Frivolous and vexatious” — these were the words that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used while addressing this year’s edition of the annual Right To Information (RTI) convention. His choice of words raises several disturbing questions. The PM conveniently ignored the fact that there is no legal definition of what constitutes “frivolous and vexatious” and there is unlikely to be one in the future. Will one person’s understanding of “frivolous” be...

-The Economic Times A new book by Bibek Debroy on Gujarat looks at how this much-talked about state has performed in economic terms. The author argues history, luck and administrative clarity have been the determining factors. There has been a discernible pickup in Gujarat's growth performance since the 10th Plan (2002-07), the five-year Plans being natural periods for breaking up the timeline. It's tempting to argue that there is nothing exceptional in...

-The Hindustan Times The Bureaucracy is determined to make you pay for your right to information (RTI), literally. Documents released under the transparency law reveal that the government has been planning to make people pay to file appeals since 2009. So far, RTI applicants only have to pay a fee of Rs. 10 for filing applications. If the information request is denied, they are entitled to appeal against the decision, initially to the...

-The Times of India How are members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes faring in the government hierarchy? At the very top level of the government Bureaucracy, out of a total of 149 secretary-level officers, there were no SC officers while there were only 4 ST officers, as of March 2011, according to a reply given by the MoS in the Prime Minister's Office V Narayanasamy.  At the next rung of additional...