-PTI   Anil Ambani-led Reliance Infrastructure Ltd has challenged an order passed by the State Information Commission bringing the company under the ambit of the Right to Information Act in the Bombay High Court, arguing that it is a private company and not a public authority. The SIC on July 19 passed an order bringing R-Infra under the ambit of the RTI after observing that though it was a private company, it...

-The Hindu   Universalisation of secondary education in 12th Plan Education without textbooks. This is what the government is contemplating for pre-school children. “We would like to move forward, hopefully, in the next few years to bring pre-school education on the formal education agenda without formally teaching children between four and six years,'' HRD Minister Kapil Sibal told the Rajya Sabha on Friday. Replying to a question on the steps taken to extend the purview...

-The Times of India   Posco officials and police faced a major stumbling block at Gadakujang village, the site of the company's proposed steel plant in Jagatsinghpur district, as a large number of irate villagers prevented their entry into the area on Thursday. Many agitated villagers prevented the entry of police forces by blocking the road at Gadakujang. Last week, the Posco authorities had started land-leveling works after acquiring about 1,980 acre land...

Until about a year ago, the number of Indians who knew the name of Kisan Baburao Hazare, popularly known as Anna Hazare, ran into a few thousand -- small change in a country of a billion people. The former army driver was known for his peculiar experiments of social reform in a village in Maharashtra, in western India. He had received national awards for his social work. By the end of...

-The Business Standard   Much depends on a strong implementation framework but the imposition of a cap by the Planning Commission could lead to arbitrary exclusions. Himanshu Assistant Professor of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University The methodology, which is based on the framework suggested by the Saxena Committee, uses indicators that have been refined using a large-scale pilot survey There are over 400 million poor (the number varies depending on which estimate you...