-DNA Even as the Modi government promises to increase the green cover, here are the challenges it is facing. Meet Ashish Arora, resort owner in Uttarakhand who lives next to a forest. It is not just the chirping birds, clean air and wild animals that surround him. He also has to grapple with forest fires every year. For the people in Uttarakhand like any other forest-rich state, forest fires are a way...

-PTI State govts fear that the new rates would not be able to attract labourers because they are still below the existing minimum wages fixed by the states. The revised MGNREGA wages for the current fiscal announced recently have left various state governments in a quandary as they apprehend the new rates would not be able to attract labourers because they are still below the existing minimum wages fixed by the...

-NDTV Solapur: As thousands of villages in the country come under the grip of drought, the role of the government's flagship work guarantee scheme, NREGA or National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, becomes crucial. In January, the Union government told the Supreme Court  that for all drought-hit states, NREGA's 100-day limit has been increased to 150 days. But travelling this week through Marathwada in Maharashtra, the country's drought central, in village after village we...

-Hindustan Times "Most of the movement in the World Press Freedom Index… is indicative of a climate of fear and tension combined with increasing control over newsrooms by governments and private-sector interests." - the RSF website India has ranked abysmally low at 133 among 180 countries in the latest annual World Press Freedom Index which says Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems “indifferent” to the threats against journalists. The rankings, which are released annually, are...

-Business Standard 2,170 million person-days planned for FY17, compared with 2,391 million person-days last year At a time when nearly half of India's 676 districts are grappling with a second consecutive year of drought, the government expects a decline in the demand for work under the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in 2016-17. The estimated number of days when people in rural India will be offered work under MGNREGS...