-PTI The Supreme Court today slammed the Centre for "fooling" people and not banning the manual scavenging despite its repeated promises that it would amend the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act to eliminate the practice. "We don’t want this type of vague affidavit. This shows you (Centre) are not serious. You are saying the same thing for the last six months. You are fooling the people...

UIDAI chief holds discussions with Kiran on project’s progress The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is hopeful of covering another 40 crore population under the Aadhar cards in the coming two years. UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani said the authority had taken steps to address the shortcomings like duplication and fake enrolments identified during the first phase and efforts were underway to develop Resident Database in all States. Mr. Nilekani told reporters after...

-The Hindu Universal electrification will remain a dream unless the government fixes the flaws in its much vaunted scheme to provide power to rural India In his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister made the statement that “when the UPA Government came to power in 2004, we had promised that we would provide electricity to all villages.” He then went on to say: “Our next target is to provide electricity to each...

-The Economic Times The three reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on coal, ultra-mega power projects and airports, playing out in the public discourse as major indictments of corruption and of the government, serve only to spread confusion and convert inFRAstructure building into a political battleground. The reports are ill-informed by commercial logic, sometimes deficient in factual detail. However, since they bear the authority of a constitutional body, the...

-The Hindu The listing of the Protection of Women Against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill for discussion and adoption in the current session of Parliament is a welcome step. It is also welcome that the government has reversed its earlier unjustifiable position of keeping domestic workers outside the purview of the proposed legislation. Amendments moved on August 7 now include these sections of working women in a sector which has seen...