-The Indian Express Unusually heavy rain has exposed the city’s broken urban planning, revealed its stolen natural waterways, and exposed its tolerance of illegal construction. The catastrophic flooding in Chennai is the result of the heaviest rain in several decades, which forced authorities to release a massive 30,000 cusecs from the Chembarambakkam reservoir into the Adyar river over two days, causing it to flood its banks and submerge neighbourhoods on both...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: After the success with opening bank accounts and two insurance schemes, the government is lining up a major push for retirement savings under its financial inclusion programme. The finance ministry has begun talks to rope in 1.5 lakh post offices along with kirana shops and chemists to sell pension plans with an assurance of minimum returns. Sources told TOI that the department of posts, which is...

-The Hindu Agriculture Ministry extends deadline by a month The Agriculture Ministry has extended by a month the deadline for States to utilise funds under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) for implementation of micro irrigation projects. Earlier, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh had said that unutilised funds should be diverted to States that showed better utilisation. About Rs. 1,000 crore had been allocated to States for micro irrigation schemes to be...

-PTI United Nations: India has been ranked a low 131 out of 167 nations on a global index that measures the level of information and communication technology access, even as the number of households with Internet and computer has increased in the country over the last five years. UN International Telecommunications Union’s flagship annual Measuring the Information Society Report said that globally 3.2 billion people are now online, representing 43.4 per cent...

-The Indian Express Education outcomes may have declined under the RTE, but scrapping the no-detention policy is not the answer. In the five years since the potentially transformative Right to Education Act (RTE) was implemented, several studies have documented the decline and stagnation of learning levels in school. The Annual Status of Education Reports have painted a dismal picture. Most children emerge from primary school lacking even rudimentary arithmetic and reading...