-The United Nations A top United Nations official today strongly encouraged governments to adopt special temporary measures, such as quotas, to boost the number of women in parliament and decision-making positions, pointing to the progress achieved by women in India as a result of affirmative action. “Here in India, quotas have spurred one of the world’s greatest successes in women’s empowerment and grassroots democracy,” Michelle Bachelet said in her keynote address to...

-PTI In another round of big-ticket reforms, the Union Cabinet will consider on Thursday raising the FDI cap in insurance sector to 49% and opening the pension sector to foreign investment besides creation of a National Investment Board. The Cabinet will also consider a number of other crucial measures like giving more powers to commodity market regulator FMC, Competition Bill to bring all sectors under Companies Act, and model tripartite agreement for operationalising...

Remember Arjun Sengupta Committee Report? It’s the same report which put paid to government’s shifting poverty estimates by asserting that almost 80% Indian survive on less than Rs 20 per day. Known as the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), the report has gone missing from the public domain. The official website of NCEUS is no more working: http://nceus.gov.in, raising doubts regarding someone, somewhere trying to hide...

-The Hindu “Environmental impact assessment tends to ignore wider impact on biodiversity” In a move that will bring cheer to wildlife lovers but could dismay industry lobbyists already complaining about the difficulty in obtaining green clearances, the government plans to add biodiversity conservation as a new criterion to grant environmental and forest clearances. “There is no biodiversity clearance till now,” admitted Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, speaking ahead of the United Nations summit...

-Economic and Political Weekly The recent Comptroller and Auditor General's report on the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and, more broadly, on nuclear safety regulation has highlighted many serious organisational and operational flaws. The report follows on a series of earlier CAG reports that documented cost and time overruns and poor performance at a number of nuclear facilities in the country. On the whole, the CAG reports offer a powerful indictment of...