The National Institute of Open Schooling was an instant choice. The sheer scale of operations — NIOS gave 5 lakh out-of-school students the chance to get an education in 2011-12 — ensured its selection as a winner in the government category. If NIOS was about scale, Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya No.2 of Zeenat Mahal won admiration for the determination with which its turnaround was achieved. Facing shutdown at one point, this Urdu-medium school became one of the top performing government schools in Delhi.

There was unanimity among the jury that NIOS and the Sarvodaya school deserved a joint award — if one was a shining example of macro intervention, the other showed what can be achieved with micro-level efforts.

Since cities have little money to cover operational costs of running buses, they do not invest in new buses or modern infra

Liquor baron Ponty Chadha and his brother – both died recently in a fratricide – had another business that is not widely known. They had acquired the concession to run public transport buses in Delhi — three clusters with a combined fleet of 600-odd vehicles. Even before they died, this private foray into public buses was turning sour. Given that public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become the country’s favourite pastime, it is important to ask if we really understand how to create and sustain essential public infrastructure for the relatively poor and the middle class. In other words, how do we work with private enterprise for facilities in which costs will have to be kept affordable — often through public subsidy or innovative fiscal management?

In an effort to curb the rapid dieselisation, the Environment Pollution Prevention and Control Authority (EPCA) has called for a proposal to impose both a one time green tax on new cars and also reintroduce the system of owners paying an annual tax on diesel cars.

The EPCA describes this as “an annual environment compensation charge amounting to 2 per cent of the purchase value of a petrol car and 4 per cent of the purchased value of a diesel car.” The second tax they want levied is an “environment compensation charge of 25 per cent of the sale value of the diesel car to be collected by the dealers at the time of the sale.”

During a public event at the United Nations climate change conference in Doha, India's veteran environmentalist Sunita Narain told a senior negotiator from India, "The Indian government should take

At the Doha climate change conference, the world agreed to strengthen the framework for future action. But it is now that action is needed

The United Nations climate talks in Doha ended in overtime, in what can be best described a nail-biting finish. This was the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The COP is held once a year to push for action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, so intertwined with economic growth that the world has been haggling for the past 20 years over who will cut and how much.

While the U.S.

While the U.S.