Huge sums of money are allocated for the rural and agrarian sectors by the Union Government in its annual budget every year, and rightly so. But in the absence of an adequate number of officials in rural areas, can the various schemes and programmes of the government be implemented properly? We will find the answer if we think about this issue deeply and the answer that would emerge should bother...

-National Herald The plea says the Centre failed to “undertake timely and effective measures for containing transmission of disease within India” despite being notified about the same by WHO in January, 2020. Six retired Bureaucrats have moved the Supreme Court seeking an independent inquiry by a Commission appointed under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, into the Central Government's "gross mismanagement" of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, legal news website LiveLaw.in has...

-India Water Portal The time for quick fixes is over; a comprehensive policy overhaul is urgently needed to impede the juggernaut of Punjab's groundwater depletion. Punjab, a small state in northwest India, derives its name from the Persian words panj (five) and āb (water), meaning the "land of five rivers". Ironically, this state is now regularly in the news for its rapidly depleting groundwater levels. The most recent government report on Punjab's...

-National Herald Dr Anoop Saraya, Head of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition Unit at AIIMS, said success of any advisory group of scientists depended on a culture of openness, independence and diversity of opinion Slamming the Narendra Modi government for ‘mishandling’ the response to COVID-19, asenior AIIMS doctors, has written in a letter to the editor of Indian Journal of Medical Sciences that there were confusing signals on how to deal with the...

-Newslaundry.com Such interrogations have to happen officially, they cannot question me about my sources and contacts over tea.’ A journalist in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow was interrogated by the Special Task Force of the state’s police after reporting on low-quality personal protective equipment kits supplied to hospitals and colleges in the state. On April 17, Lucknow-based journalist Manish Pandey of News1 India, a Hindi news channel, broke the story of a letter sent by...