-The Telegraph New Delhi: When a single woman or unwed mother applies for her child's birth certificate, it must be issued on the basis of her affidavit and without insisting that she disclose the name of the father, the Supreme Court ruled today. The court also held that an unwed Christian mother could assume the guardianship of her child without issuing prior notice to the father for permission as laid down in...
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NGOs’ foreign funds and a trust deficit -Trilochan Sastry
-The Hindu There is no organised conspiracy against NGOs. It is in the nature of power to exercise greater control, and exempt itself from accountability. The recent changes in the rules governing foreign funding of NGOs under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) have been widely discussed. The last word on it will perhaps never be written. The UPA government initiated this and we see some concrete changes now. Sifting through the...
More »Varun Gauri, Senior Economist, Development Research Group at the World Bank, interviewed by Anjuli Bhargava
-Business Standard The World Bank's latest report "Mind, Society and Behaviour" calls for re-designing development policy based on a more realistic understanding of how human beings think and behave. The lead author of the report, Varun Gauri, was in New Delhi and spoke to Anjuli Bhargava on the thinking behind the report and what India can do with it. Edited excerpts: * Right from the cover design to the title, this report...
More »Fight against hunger too slow and uneven -Jomo Kwame Sundaram
-The Hindu The Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of chronically undernourished people in developing countries by 2015 is within reach. But progress must accelerate by the end of this year Almost 800 million people, or one in nine in the world, continue to suffer from hunger. The number of hungry people has declined globally by more than 167 million over the last decade, and by more than 200 million since...
More »Modi government cuts social sector allocations to states by half to promote cooperative federalism
-The Economic Times BENGALURU: As the central government devolves more fiscal freedom to the states, they seem to be cutting allocations to social sectors, especially agriculture and allied areas in response, according to the initial findings of a study. The Narendra Modi administration wants to empower states further as part of a push toward cooperative federalism. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's February budget cut allocations to the states by more than half in...
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