-The Indian Express Indian farmers are under stress this year. Earlier, many of them lost their crops in the kharif season, which was almost a drought with monsoon rains falling 12 per cent below their long-period average. Now unseasonal rains have impacted them adversely in the rabi season. Agri-GDP growth this year, expected to be a meagre 1.1 per cent before the unseasonal rains, may fall flat to just zero, if...
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When The Haze Takes Over -Pavithra S Rangan
-Outlook The NDA seems bent on subverting the RTI Act. Is the slow dismembering of the CIC part of the plan? We Have No Recall For the first time since its inception, CIC's functions expropriated by the govt A search committee set up to appoint a new CIC chief says meeting details cannot be revealed; "highly confidential" RTI appeals pertaining to prime depts...
More »Improving Healthcare Services at Reduced Prices -Meeta Rajivlochan
-Economic and Political Weekly The key to improving the quality of healthcare services in India and reducing costs at the same time can be found by enacting legislation which lays down minimum standards of patient care. In the absence of such standards and the reluctance of health insurance companies to standardise either price or quality, healthcare services continue to be expensive and of doubtful quality. Developing standards of patient care by...
More »Rural Development Ministry to introduce Mobile Monitoring System in MGNREGA to bring Transparency
-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Rural Development Year end Review -2014-15 The Ministry of Rural Development is likely to introduce Mobile Monitoring System for effective implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, MGNREGA. The Monitoring System will be introduced on a pilot basis to allow real time monitoring of all works, workers attendance and work site measurement. The move is likely to plug leakages in the rural job scheme. Moreover,...
More »Like UPA, most ministries in Modi govt lying low on RTI disclosures -Nivedita Mookerji & Nitin Sethi
-The Business Standard The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, like its United Progressive Alliance (UPA) predecessor, seems to be failing on suo motu disclosures under the Right to Information Act (RTI). The department of personnel & training (DoPT) had last month issued an official memorandum directing all central ministries and departments to upload replies to RTI applications and first appeals on their respective websites from October 31. This had...
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