-The Hindu "Employers, education providers, and youth live in parallel universes" India has a larger proportion of youth population than the rest of the world, according to the United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) State of the World's Population Report, released on Tuesday said. "Today's record 1.8 billion young people present an enormous opportunity to transform the future," UNFPA Executive Director, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehim, said in a statement. "Young people are the innovators, creators,...

-The Hindu Business Line The Centre has adopted a pragmatic approach to cooking gas subsidies The reintroduction of the direct benefits transfer scheme for the supply of cooking gas, after its withdrawal in March this year, is a welcome signal that subsidy targeting is back on the policy agenda. Unlike its UPA avatar, cash transfers will now be based on LPG consumers providing their bank account numbers, rather than Aadhaar numbers, to...

-The Business Standard The Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, like its United Progressive Alliance (UPA) predecessor, seems to be failing on suo motu disclosures under the Right to Information Act (RTI). The department of personnel & training (DoPT) had last month issued an official memorandum directing all central ministries and departments to upload replies to RTI applications and first appeals on their respective websites from October 31. This had...

-Business Standard A monsoon deficit is likely to affect the agriculture output, which could have an impact on the food inflation The sharp fall in inflation over the past few months has raised the clamour for interest rate cuts. With the Consumer Price Index (CPI) falling to 5.5 per cent in October from 6.5 per cent a month ago, which is below the central bank's target of six per cent by January...

-The Hindu Business Line   The Open Government Data initiative is gaining ground, but it needs to be in step with the Central Information Commission Open government data (OGD) is fashionable. Governments and public institutions in Europe and other parts of the globe are making increasing numbers of datasets available to the public by means of national, regional, local or thematic portals, in keeping with their political commitments towards open government and open...