-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) wants the Narendra Modi government to give it Right to Information (RTI) powers as it has been facing problems in obtaining details relevant to its audits of government finances and decision making. CAG Shashi Kant Sharma has written a letter to finance minister Arun Jaitley demanding that the national auditor should be given RTI powers to access information and a...

As the country celebrates 68th anniversary of her independence this year, recent data from the Census 2011 reveals that the population of homeless declined by 8.8% between 2001 and 2011 to reach 17.7 lakhs. This means that 4.5 lakh households (of average household size 3.9) still do not have any shelter to sleep safely. Although the percentage share of homeless in total population is miniscule (i.e. 0.15%), in absolute numbers...

-The Telegraph In her recent book, Green Wars, the environmental journalist Bahar Dutt, writes: "The editor of a leading media house, everytime I pitched a green story, would invariably complain: ‘Environmentalism is stalling growth; all I am interested in is double-digit growth for this country.'" The idea that environmental protection and economic progress are at odds is widely held among India's elite. It is shared by newspaper editors, economists, businessmen, and, not...

-The Hindu Driven substantially by the higher education sector, real estate deals and mining income, India's black economy could now be nearly three-quarters the size of its reported Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These are among the findings of a confidential report commissioned by the government and accessed exclusively by The Hindu. Since there were no "reliable" estimates of black money generated in India and held within and outside the country, the UPA...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...