-The Indian Express Year on year from June to December, communal clashes more than treble. Patna: Bihar has seen 87 major and minor communal clashes between June and December 2013, over three times the 24 incidents during the corresponding period of 2012. This coincides with the split of the ruling JD(U) with the BJP, an alliance of 17 years, and comes after seven-and-a-half years without a single major communal clash. A monthly break-up...

-The Hindu Business Line Clientelism - tying benefits to political choices - cannot work because voting preferences cannot be ascertained. Do parties and their local agents link access to government services and benefits from government welfare schemes to how voters vote, or are expected to vote? This political strategy, which social scientists refer to as clientelism, depends on a massive investment in local leaders who collect information on voters' party preferences, vote choices...

-The Indian Express     Policy design should worry less about public versus private, and more about choice and accountability. The most noteworthy aspect of the Aam Aadmi Party's manifesto is the explicit focus on service delivery. This is what its government will be evaluated on, and attention has shifted from the AAP's political success to how it will deliver on these promises. The ideas below reflect learnings from over a decade of research...

-The Hindu For the first time in decades, the Maoists have encouraged calibrated polling in some areas, instead of fanatically implementing a policy to boycott the election The districts of Chhattisgarh partially controlled by Maoists - with 12 Assembly constituencies - voted overwhelmingly in 2013. Compared to 2008, voter turnout in 2013 increased by 9.67 percentage points in 12 constituencies, while the overall polling was 6.81 percentage points higher than in the...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The government's key policymakers are drawing up plans to tackle the problem of stubborn food prices and may rope in cooperative entities to set up standalone stores to sell vegetables and other food products across the country. The race to tackle the inflation problem, identified as one of the factors for the rout of the Congress in the recent state elections, has gathered momentum in the run-up...