-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government may have blamed institutions like Comptroller and Auditor General for the 'policy paralysis' during UPA-2 but on Sunday, President Pranab Mukherjee was all praise for CAG, Election Commission and Central Vigilance Commission, saying they were strengthening democracy by their "impartiality and capacity to take decision with independence". Speaking at a function of Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) here, the President stressed on "urgency...
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Come clean on water
-The Business Standard Industry can lead in saving precious drops The bad news on water is known to experts, but not perhaps to most Indians. By some estimates, India will become water scarce in just about five years, and be a massive 50 per cent short on water in another 10. The country, therefore, needs to find better ways to use water. Is India Inc, in particular, thinking about this problem? The...
More »Rights and state capability-Yamini Aiyar
-Live Mint Rights laws offer an important lesson for the new government: you cannot legislate your way out of state failure It is well known that the Indian state suffers from a serious crisis of implementation capability. So deep is this crisis that it cannot even reliably perform the most routine tasks like moving money and getting employees to show up at work. So, it is hardly surprising that rights laws have...
More »MGNREGS social audit lessons from AP -Yamini Aiyar
-Live Mint Andhra Pradesh's experience with social audits holds important lessons for the Congress's empowerment agenda At the heart of the Congress party's narrative on the rights-based welfare state is the idea that rights laws, to quote Sonia Gandhi, "put pressure on the executive to be more responsive and accountable" and in doing so bring about an "empowerment revolution". To enable this revolution, rights laws have had built into them procedural...
More »Spending won’t make it better -Meeta Rajivlochan
-The Indian Express Raised budgets are no guarantee of improved healthcare. With a new government in the offing, all suggested agendas for health are talking of an increase in health budgets and the fact that at 1 per cent of the GDP, government spending on public health in India is one of the lowest in the world; the rest is out of pocket expenditure. The US is a prime example of the...
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