-Livemint.com MGNREGS could alleviate rural distress but, in its current form, its overall impact on the rural economy is LIMited in scope With rural distress deepening across India and private consumption growing anaemically, calls for ramping up the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), are growing louder ahead of the upcoming budget. Proponents of MGNREGS believe that it may be the only ammunition in the government’s arsenal to fight rural...

-The Hindu In a democracy, people participate politically not only during but between elections We are witnessing unprecedented public protests in India. Thousands continue to assemble on the streets to demand that the government rethink the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens. Such public protests are the hallmark of a free, democratic society, whose logic demands that the voice of the people be heard by those in power and...

-Livemint.com The government’s inordinately large food stockpiles have resulted in an artificial market scarcity On 7 January, the ministry of statistics released India’s advance estimates of national income for 2019-20, pegging the economy’s growth rate this financial year at 5%. Based on data available for the first two quarters, this seems an overestimate. Most indicators suggest that actual growth may be lower than 5%. This is bad news, especially since there is...

-Down to Earth Govt policy think tank asks chief secretaries to extract nutrients from human excreta and use them in place of fertilsers Explore the possibility of extracting essential nutrients like phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium and carbon from human excreta and replace fertilisers used in agriculture with them, the Niti Ayog has advised all states. Faecal sludge is a rich source of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K), the three essential nutrients used...

-The Indian Express Vegetable inflation jumping to an over six-year high and pulses inflation rising to a more than 3-year high were the key reasons driving retail inflation. Wholesale price index (WPI)-based inflation surged to a seven-month high of 2.59 per cent in December 2019, as against 0.58 per cent in November, due to a sharp rise in prices of food articles like onions and potatoes, according to the data released by...