-The Business Standard Intrastate inequality can only be corrected through reform of budgetary allocation formulae between districts within states The hoopla surrounding election results in India is reminiscent of nothing so much as a horse race ("...and X romps home the winner!"). The difference is that for the horse and its handlers, the work is done when the race is over. For the winners in the recent round of state elections,...

-BBC A survey done earlier this year shows that public facilities in the poorest regions of India have steadily expanded, improving the lives of people there, writes development economist Jean Dreze. Once upon a time, not so long ago, public facilities in the poorest districts of India were few and far between. Most people were left to their own devices and they lived in the shadow of hunger, insecurity and exploitation, with no...

-PTI NEW DELHI: A day after Rahul Gandhi made a strong pitch for more legislations to weed out corruption, activists on Sunday demanded convening of a special session of Parliament to pass bills dealing with graft at the grass-roots level. "Just a Lokpal Bill is not enough. It is actually one part of many that have to come together. To our mind, the Grievance Redress Bill is 'Aam Aadmi Ka Lokpal'," said...

-The Hindu The National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) has sought the simultaneous passage of the Lokpal Bill, the Grievance Redress Bill and the Whistleblower Protection Bill, contending that these laws formed a basket of inter-linked measures that constituted the much required accountability regime. Addressing a press conference, the NCPRI's Nikhil Dey, Anjali Bharadwaj and Shekhar Singh said that though the Lokpal Bill was not entirely to their satisfaction and...

-The Hindu     The political executive and the permanent executive should realise they are public servants first and work in harmony to achieve the constitutional objectives There is a need to arrest the ‘laal batti' [red beacon] culture in public governance. The Supreme Court of India has been delivering a variety of judgments on matters of public governance, and these have been the subject of debate and discussion. Some of these related to...