-The Hindu Unlike the rest of the world, India is stridently moving away from community-involved conservation models In February this year, one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries issued a court order which stood to evict more than a million forest-dwelling people from their homes. More damningly, India, a state that supports about 8% of global species diversity and over 100 million forest-dwellers, did not even put up a legal defence before...

-IDRonline.org Replacing India's Public Distribution System with Direct Benefit Transfers will improve efficiency, but shouldn't be implemented at the cost of individual choice. The Public Distribution System (PDS) is India’s flagship food security programme but also suffers from well-known inefficiencies. Even official government estimates suggest that a large share of public spending on the PDS does not reach intended beneficiaries. Thus, the idea of Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) in lieu of subsidised...

-The Indian Express Subramanian’s suggestions come days ahead of the Budget to be presented on February 1. Incidentally, Congress President Rahul Gandhi said his party will bring Minimum Income Guarantee for every poor person if voted to power. New Delhi: In order to tackle agrarian distress effectively, the Central government and the states should launch a basic income scheme which guarantees minimum cash transfers to all except the well-off in rural...

-TheWire.in A recent study has found that higher caste groups have experienced constant and high upward mobility over time, a result that contradicts a popular notion that it is increasingly difficult for upper-caste Hindus to get ahead. New Delhi: A new study focusing on intergenerational mobility – changes in social status between different generations within the same family – claims India’s Muslims to be the least upwardly mobile group, Indian Express reported....

-The Indian Express The study also says that mobility levels for African Americans in US are better than those for Muslims in India but the movement of Dalits and Scheduled Tribes is comparable to that of African-Americans. New Delhi: As rising aspirations of India’s demographic dividend shape social and political discourse, comes a sobering new study: Looking at education and income, there is little inter-generational mobility (upward mobility from parent to child)...