-The Hindu Initiatives by India discussed New Delhi: The United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Change, Luis Alfonso de Alba, met Union Environment and Forests Minister Prakash Javadekar and discussed India’s initiatives to meet its climate commitments. Ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit in New York in September, Mr. de Alba, appointed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as his climate envoy, is visiting several countries and urging leaders and businessmen to do...

-The Economic Times India’s deficit numbers have come under lens as the govt is increasingly depending on off-budget borrowings. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said that the central government’s key deficit figures may be considerably higher than those stated in the union budget. In a presentation to the 15th Finance Commission (FFC) on July 8, three days after the July 5 budget, CAG has asked whether the extra-budgetary resources accounted for...

-The Hindu Marriage is the biggest reason for migration in India What is the biggest driving force behind people in India moving out of home? If you guessed employment, guess again. It's not for education, either. The most common reason for migration in India is marriage. The finding, which was part of the 2011 Census, was published recently and showed that 46% of the total migrants moved because of marriage and of these, 97%...

-The Hindu The Economic Survey presents an unbalanced view of the technical interventions in MGNREGA A chapter in the recent Economic Survey on the “transformational” impact of Aadhaar on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) merits scrutiny. It presents a skewed and unbalanced view of the programme’s technical interventions instead of taking a comprehensive view of the implementation. The Survey draws heavily from the Indian School of Business’s working...

-The Hindu An analysis of the NITI Aayog’s ‘Healthy States, Progressive India’ report released on June 25 shows that the usage of estimated figures in place of reported numbers, to calculate certain health indicators, has adversely impacted the final index score of certain States while boosting that of others. Skewed result The report had used an estimated number of births and deliveries to calculate two key health outcome indicators — “full immunisation coverage”...