-The Hindu   The Department of Organic and Seed Certification has certified 93,552 tonnes seed from the paddy, millets, pulses, cotton, oil seeds and vegetable varieties. The purpose behind certifying the seeds was to convey to the farmers that they could be assured of the purity of the seeds, the department said in a press release. The purity of the seeds had been maintained and that they were of good quality. The Seed...

Like the majority of India's children, the Right to Education (RTE) Act has completed its first year facing malnourishment, neglect and routine criticism. A year after it was notified as law, the right to elementary education remains a dream. The law provides a 5-year window to its implementation but the dream it legislates looks as elusive now as it did when this countdown started. While one important clause is facing...

The Jan Lokpal is being vested with sweeping powers, which are susceptible to misuse. The centralised structure of the Lokpal will be ill-suited for sorting out governance deficit. People will be confined to being complainants and applicants. There is need to make the Jan Lokpal people-centric FOR many who quite rightly guessed that the Lokpal Bill drafted by the government would be a non-starter, the alternative merited automatic support. However, little...

A Working Group (WG) set up by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has drafted a detailed note on land acquisition and relief and rehabilitation which seeks not only to go beyond the pending government bills on the subject, but recommends that the two be merged into a single National Development, Acquisition, Displacement and Rehabilitation Act. Interestingly, it rejects the Haryana model that Congress leaders only too often hold up...

-News One   Though India’s social sector spending is higher than many other developing countries, one of its flagship welfare programs — the public distribution system (PDS) — is fraught with leakages, a World Bank report said Wednesday. The PDS scheme, which consumes around one percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and covers upto 25 percent of the poor households, has had limited success, as only 41 percent of the...