-The Hindu   New Delhi: When Sunil Kumar Aledia came across a man lying on the road on Wednesday he first mistook him for a dead body. It was only after inching closer that he realised that the person was breathing very lightly, he said. “Paani (water) is all that he kept repeating and managed to say. Then I bought a bottle of water and gave it to him,” said Mr. Aledia, convenor...

-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...

-The Hindu Business Line The government must simplify and rationalise GST, kickstart rural consumption, revive agriculture and tackle the lack of credit for capital creation, says former PM Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an eminent economist himself, feels that the Narendra Modi-led government needs to come out of its habit of headline management and address the economic challenges which the country is facing today. “We cannot afford to deny that India is facing...

-The Times of India The Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2019, was passed in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday amid high drama and an Opposition walkout. The Opposition says the changes put forth in the bill, which had already cleared the Lok Sabha, undermine the independence of the RTI watchdog. The government has argued that the amendments leave the information officials' powers untouched and are aimed at streamlining the commission. A...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced on Thursday that residents of 1,797 unauthorised colonies of Delhi will soon get ownership rights to their properties. The bonanza comes a few months before assembly elections in Delhi and two days after the Union housing and urban affairs ministry circulated a Cabinet proposal for formulating a framework for the exercise. The cut-off date for regularisation of these colonies is...