-HowIndiaLives.com * From high vacancies to shorter tenures to rising pendency, the Central Information Commission (CIC), India’s right-to-information (RTI) appeals body faces a plethora of problems today From almost always having a head to being headless. From five-year terms for key staff to three-year terms. From rules that didn’t leave room for interpretation to an overriding provision for the government. From hardly ever rejecting applications on the grounds of documentation to doing...

-Newsclick.in An assessment by the Environics trust and the Mineral Inheritors Rights Association shows that not even a single company qualifies the fit and proper person test often used by international agencies as a benchmark for a place in the bidding process of natural resources. For the first time in five decades, India’s coal reserves are up for grabs to private sector bidders. The auction for 38 coal blocks is currently underway....

-Down to Earth Sharad Chandra, director, flood forecast monitoring division, Central Water Commission, spoke to DTE on increasing instances of urban flooding   Urban flooding is increasingly becoming a common occurrence in India, the latest victim being Hyderabad. The city received unusually heavy rainfall October 13-14, 2020, due to a deep depression that developed in the Bay of Bengal. Heavy damage to property, roads and human lives were reported. Experts have argued that...

-The Hindu Business Line The govt’s POSHAN Abhiyaan is a step in the right direction. But for it to succeed an empowered community must form its backbone and the measures adopted should be inclusive, across the urban-rural and literacy fault-lines POSHAN (nutrition) has become the buzzword within the development community in the last couple of years. The launch of Prime Minister’s Overarching Scheme for Nutrition (POSHAN) Abhiyaan has given nutrition the much-required...

-Newsclick.in Double digit jobless rate, crashing women’s employment and absolute fall in number of employed have left people in th state devastated – and furious. Unemployment, it is often said, is death by a thousand cuts. It pushes families into hunger, snatches away children’s education, prevents medical care, and propels people into debt. And, if you are already poor and disadvantaged and living on the edge, unemployment is like a death sentence. A...