-The Indian Express This is according to data obtained from the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS), which oversees all KVs in the country, by The Indian Express under the Right to Information Act (RTI). Admissions to Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) across the country under the discretionary quota of the Minister of Human Resource Development (HRD) in 2018-19 have surged more than 20-fold compared to 2014. And admissions to KVs under the Minister’s discretionary...

-The Indian Express To avoid a substantial fiscal slippage at the state government level, a sizeable expenditure reduction or deferral is likely to be required, given that the borrowing limit set by the central government acts as a soft constraint to the size of the states’ fiscal deficits. There are growing concerns that the two major sources of tax revenues for state governments, the state goods and services tax (SGST) and...

-The Hindu Business Line A dispersed pattern of urbanisation leads to sprawl with higher motorisation and pollution. A new urban vision is needed India’s demographic dividend cannot be realised if young entrants to the labour force as well as potential migrants from agriculture do not gain new livelihoods. Hastening of the structural transformation brings with it three mega-challenges for policy-makers: employment of migrants; growing urbanisation; and ensuring better education and vocational training...

-The Indian Express 'Developing Asia' refers to a group of 45 countries that are members of the ADB The economic outlook update released by the Asian Development Bank last week highlighted that the number of urban inhabitants in ‘Developing Asia’ has increased “almost five-fold since 1970”. The report, tracking World Urbanisation Prospects data, also states that the two-thirds of the nearly 1.5 billion additional city dwellers in the region belonged from...

-The Hindu The campaign to end open defecation can succeed only if it takes communities with it India’s declaration on the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi that its rural areas are now open defecation-free will be acknowledged around the world as a milestone in its developmental journey. Cleanliness and sanitation were central to Gandhi’s concerns for his vast number of impoverished countrymen, and should ideally have been pursued zealously by governments...