-The Indian Express The 10 toilets were built in three spurts — four toilets each were inaugurated before the 1999 and 2005 Assembly elections, when the Left Front was in power. Sahari (Binpur): Two classrooms, 60 students and 10 toilets for girls — none of which is functional. This is Sahari Primary School at Binpur, an assembly segment in Jangalmahal reserved for tribals. Like clockwork, politicians have turned up here before...

-The Hindu Business Line IOB, BoB and Canara Bank lead, finds study by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiatives   New Delhi: As the Finance Ministry and the central Bank try to clean up the balance sheets of troubled public sector lenders, a new study has found that Banks that saw a sharp rise in bad loans in 2014-15 were not very forthcoming with information requests by the public. While noting that there was “no positive...

-The Indian Express Several questions have been raised about our estimates of the savings from the DBT scheme for cooking gas. But all parties accept that the programme reduced subsidised sales by 24 per cent. Direct cash transfers have the potential to improve the economic lives of the poor by transferring benefits to households quickly and directly. Achieving these benefits requires thoughtful design of schemes, and careful, rigorous analysis of ongoing...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The enrolment of 100 crore residents under the Aadhaar scheme will help the government address concerns that making the UID mandatory will eliminate the poor from government subsidies. With more than 90% of India's adult population enrolled, fears of exclusion have receded and alternative identities like voter IDs are not Banned. "This will definitely help deserving people who really need subsidies and government help. Aadhaar will...

-The Hindu Business Line BusinessLine goes to villages, including those visited in 2014, to understand the progress of the ambitious National Optical Fibre Network. Unused infrastructure and low awareness tell a story of missed links In one corner of the Ramnagar village panchayat office, in Panisagar block of Tripura, is a defunct four-year-old computer. The machine, connected with a 10 mbps broadBand line was supposed to bring digital services to this remote...