The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
Why has the Anna Hazare movement against corruption steered clear of people’s movements, and why have the latter behaved likewise towards the Hazare agitation? Manoranjan Mohanty (“People’s Movements and the Anna Upsurge”, EPW, 17 September 2011) is despondent about this gap between the two. The reasons are obvious and are …
Development projects conceived now are rarely expected to have a life of more than five years, perhaps ten years at most. Looking back over more than twenty years of project experience in community forestry - itself grounded on an integrated development project of a similar time span - is thus …
The report highlights the emerging landscape in India and key development challenges that face the country. In doing so it aims to identify key areas that can contribute to transformational change that empower people and build an inclusive, climate-resilient, sustainable development paradigm for 2013-17 and beyond.
The environmental changes that have swept the planet over the last twenty years are spotlighted in a new compilation of statistical data by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), released in a report entitled "Keeping Track of our Changing Environment: From Rio to Rio+20". The report is produced as part of …
PM Manmohan Singh on Friday endorsed the concerns of his ministerial colleagues over Right To Information, saying the transparency enabler should not adversely affect deliberations in government and deter honest officials from expressing their views on file. While hailing RTI’s extensive use and underlining his government’s intent to strengthen the …
Asserting that there will be no dilution of the RTI Act, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said Government wishes to make Right to Information an “even more effective instrument” for ensuring transparency but wanted a “critical look” at it to address certain concerns. Dr. Singh said the transparency law …
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assured anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare that his government is not only committed to an effective Lokpal law but also working on a comprehensive agenda to eradicate corruption and improve governance. Responding to a letter from Mr. Hazare, the Prime Minister said creation of Lokpal was …
Japanese and South Korean companies have won the highest marks in Asia for “responsible” investing, which remains in its infancy in these countries, in a new survey by Eiris, an environmental research house. Companies based in Hong Kong, China and Singapore, meanwhile, failed to make progress in this arena, with …
This publication is a compilation of responses from civil society organisations to the Draft Approach Paper to the 12th Five-Year Plan.It presents a detailed critique of the Approach Paper in areas such as education, gender, youth development, land issues, water and sanitation, among others.
A Bill to establish an independent authority to investigate offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 so as to detect corruption by expeditious investigation and to prosecute offenders and redressal of certain types of public grievances and to provide protection to whistleblowers.
This paper looks at the ways in which clean energy is being governed in India. It analyses and seeks to explain the nature of governance arrangements and policy-making processes around the development of energy sources and technologies defined as ‘clean’ both by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and beyond. Such …
Aditya Batra in conversation with Keshab Sthapit, a mayor famous for muscling his way to urban renewal. To know more click on to the following URL: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/last-mayor-kathmandu
The inaugural: TOI Social Impact Awards: recognize unsung heroes who have transformed millions of lives Do we get the Anna Hazare option, the right to say, none of the above,” asked Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh as soon as the TOI Social Impact Awards jury meeting started (referring to …
Beijing: Chief Minister Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan has said that better investment opportunities are available in Madhya Pradesh due to good governance and abundance of resources. Madhya Pradesh is progressing fast on the path of development due to efficient implementation of health, education and public welfare programmes and development projects. …
The JFM programme faces existential crisis. On the one hand, pieces of legislation like the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, and the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996, have come into existence, giving rights to tribals and forest dwellers over forest resources and their management. On the other …
The Jan Lokpal Bill epitomises the ultimate faith of the ordinary citizens, born out of utter despair, in an omnipotent authority – the Lokpal. But mere legislation cannot bring about reforms, without accompanying mass struggles to get them implemented by the executive agencies and grass roots movements to change social …
The anti-corruption campaign has shown that a desperate public demands an immediate solution. Citizens have got a taste of direct democracy which is frightening for the privileged manipulators of the system, but liberating for the poor who are usually manipulated. While what the future holds cannot be predicted, the prize …
China is attempting to pursue the same impossible path as the rest of the world: generating consumer demand and wealth without destroying its natural resources and the planet.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005 which is a rights-based flagship scheme of the Government of India with effect from 2 February, 2006, guarantees at least 100 days of wage employment in a given financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do …
