-The Hindu Business Line The Rangarajan panel has added to the confusion. Let's have one final committee to set things right There is constant confusion in India over BPL (below poverty line) figures proffered by different agencies. The latest is the debate over the Rangarajan Committee's estimates, as against the assessment of the Tendulkar Committee. The difference in their estimates is due to variation in the parameters adopted. In other words, the definition...

-The Guardian A UN working group has devised a final draft of targets to succeed the millennium development goals. What do you think of the 17 proposals? The UN working group responsible for crafting the sustainable development goals (SDGs) has handed down its final proposal, adding a goal to address domestic and global inequality. The recommendations include 17 goals and 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. The list includes a reworking of...

-IANS NEW DELHI: Over 600,000 posts of teachers at primary level are lying vacant under the state sector and the national literacy mission, parliament was informed on Monday. "The total teachers post lying vacant at the primary level both under the state sector and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan are 6, 06, 191," human resource development Minister Smriti Irani told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply. "The states recruits teachers based on their...

-The Hindu   An improvement in sanitation and cleanliness will eliminate much of the difference in malnutrition between India and the rest of the world, and across Indian States Historically the greatest advances in longevity and mortality reduction have come not from treatment of individual disease but from public health. This includes modern drainage and sewerage systems (sewage treatment plants), drinking water systems that produce and deliver disease-free water and solid waste disposal...

-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...