-The Hindu Business Line The priority for this government is to promote the medical care market, not ensure universal healthcare for the majority Those at the helm of policymaking in the country have been, for some time, strongly advocating austerity as the principle for public expenditure policies, particularly for the social sectors. Arvind Panagariya, the vice-chairperson of the NITI Aayog, suggests that “for just three-quarters of a per cent of the GDP”, 0.76...

  Social audit is an important tool not just to ensure transparency and accountability in the MGNREGS, but also for successful running of the programme. The MIS (Management Information System) data provided by the website www.nrega.nic.in reveals that at the national-level roughly one-third of all districts were covered under social audit during the financial year 2015-16, as on 26 March, 2016. The top 5 states during 2015-16 (FY) in terms of the...

-The Indian Express According to the Census, the total percentage of minorities in the country is over 20 per cent, including Muslims (14.2 per cent), Christians (2.78 per cent), Sikhs (2.08), Buddhists (0.84) and Jains (0.45). MINORITIES constituted 8.71 per cent of central government recruitment in 2014-15 with 13,571 of them obtaining jobs from a total of 1.56 lakh, according to information obtained by The Indian Express under the RTI Act. The government...

-The Indian Express Denied access to public road for funeral procession, Dalit mourners helpless as police forcibly take bodies, bury them. Madurai: WITH A straight face, M Karthikeyan says his grandparents, who died recently, received “the distinction of a state burial”. “They were buried by police, only the 21-gun salute was missing,” said the 30-year-old Dalit from Nagapattinam. Behind the dark humour, is a chilling story of how caste divisions in a Tamil Nadu...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Call it ironical or plain bureaucratic secrecy, the government does not want to share the details of appointment of new Chief Information Commissioner RK Mathur. Anjali Bhardwaj of National Campaign for People's Right to Information had filed an application under Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking details of the appointment process including names of people considered, number of applications received, file notings and whether a search committee...