The country's main planning body will overhaul of the system of village panchayat in the next Five-Year Plan period to improve its functioning and check siphoning of funds meant for social sector programmes. Over 250,000 panchayats or village councils in the country collectively handle about Rs 90,000 crore in social sector funds every year, but embezzlement by village representatives often prevents the benefits of welfare schemes from reaching the needy. To remedy...
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Dr Edgar Whitley, research coordinator of the LSE Identity Project interviewed by R Ramakumar
DR EDGAR WHITLEY is Reader in Information Systems at the Information Systems and Innovation Group in the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has a PhD in Information Systems from the LSE. His research and practical interests include global outsourcing, social aspects of IT-based change, collaborative innovation in an outsourcing context, and the business implications of cloud computing. He is also an expert in identity, privacy and security...
More »Justice Markandey Katju clarifies
-The Hindu Justice Markandey Katju, Chairman, Press Council of India, has issued the following clarification on his critical observations of the Indian media. I have expressed my views relating to the media in several T.V. interviews I gave as well as in my articles in some newspapers. However, many people, including many media people, wanted clarification and amplification of some of the issues I had raised. Many media people (including several T.V. channels)...
More »Father Cedric Prakash, human rights and peace activist interviewed by Radhika Ramaseshan
Father Cedric Prakash is a human rights and peace activist based in Ahmedabad. He has campaigned for the justice of the victims of the 2002 communal violence on peril of being publicly branded as “non-Gujarati and non-Hindu” by chief minister Narendra Modi. A resident of Gujarat for nearly 40 years, Prakash is the founding director of Prashant, a centre for human rights, peace and justice. He was named Chevalier of the...
More »The environmental cost of diesel subsidy by Sunita Narain
Consider this. Every time petrol prices rise, oil companies end up losing more money. How? The price differential between petrol and diesel increases further; people start buying diesel-powered vehicles so oil firms bleed more. Even worse, we all bleed because dieselisation adds to toxic pollution in our cities. This, in turn, adds to the health burden and costs. This is all very well accepted. Yet, nobody has done anything to fix...
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