-The Telegraph New Delhi: Health experts today criticised a government delay in implementing a proposed daily drug therapy for tuberculosis patients, meant to reduce the risk of relapse after completion of treatment. Although the health ministry had itself last year released TB treatment standards emphasising a move towards daily therapy, virtually all patients treated under the government TB control programme receive thrice-a-week therapy, which carries a higher risk of relapse. A consortium of...

-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...

-The Indian Express It is easy to see why the Unique Identity (UID) project, also known as Aadhaar, has caught the imagination of many administrators, economists and policymakers. Identity verification is a routine problem in India and Aadhaar sounds like a foolproof solution. The idea is really smart and the technology is cutting-edge. After the initial hurdle of universal enrolment, numerous applications are possible: monitoring the attendance of government employees, linking...

-The Indian Express Given indicators that the government is considering moving to cash transfers and replacing the public distribution system (PDS), and the release of the Shanta Kumar Committee report, the debate on how best to provide food security has been rekindled. The report has a careful analysis of the sources of inefficiency at various stages of the procurement, storage and distribution system. Especially heartening is the admission that the Food...

The India Country Report 2015 on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes at a time when the Union Budget 2015-16 allegedly cut expenditure on several social sector schemes and programmes. This year's MDG country report says that India will fail to achieve two important targets pertaining to reducing hunger and maternal mortality by 2015, among others. Released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the report says that India is...