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...

-The Hindustan   If you wish to investigate the proceedings of any redevelopment project but find it difficult due to the unavailability of City Survey number (CS no.), you can find the information with the Mere click of a mouse. A few Right To Information (RTI) activists have acquired detailed reports of 1,365 redevelopment projects from the Maharashtra Housing Area Development Authority (Mhada) and the civic building proposal department. The information is...

India’s public distribution system has limited benefits due to huge leakage and wastage, World Bank said on Tuesday. It also recommended cash transfer as an alternative to provide subsidised food for the poor. “No country in the world has a well-functioning PDS system. India is no exception,” World Bank said in its report Social Protection for a changing India that was launched here Tuesday. “The public distribution system continues to absorb substantial...

Recently released data on infant deaths across states in India has thrown up surprising results, leaving health experts puzzled. Average infant mortality rate for the country as a whole stood at 50 in 2009, down by 30% compared to a decade ago. The rate is much higher than developed countries but the pace at which it is declining is encouraging. But the surprises lurk in state level data. Three states -...