-Business Today Social sector spending and investments in infrastructure development could be the highlights of the forthcoming Union Budget 2018-19, credit rating agency ICRA forecasts. It expects increase in budgetary allocations for social infrastructure and social security spending, such as NREGA (rural job security), food subsidy (food security), insurance schemes and welfare pensions. Larger allocations for infrastructure related to cold chains, etc., considered to boost the agricultural sector and the rural...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Children below five years in India who receive good nutrition are likelier to complete college education, find jobs and remain unmarried in their early 20s, researchers said on Friday. The health researchers, who surveyed a group of adults who had received a daily corn-soya blend upma meal when they were children, say their findings show how nutritional intervention during early childhood can influence long-term outcomes in education and...

-The Economic Times The art of good governance is through trial and error, figuring out what works where and how, and scaling up from below. Only then can one have a solid foundation. Aadhaar literally means something that holds (dhaaran: to hold). The word is interpreted either as a foundation or base (such as, to a building), or a container (such as, of water), even though given that it is an identity-verifying...

-TheWire.in The proposed Market Assurance Scheme should not leave states to fend for themselves when it comes to price support for farmers, especially as the agrarian crisis is one that is caused mainly by central policies. The Budget season, that too in the last full year before the 2019 general elections, brings the debate back to agriculture in the country. Apart from several farmers’ struggles across the country, including the unprecedented unified...

-The Indian Express At Davos, India needs to outline its vision to make growth inclusive Earlier this month, the external affairs ministry announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would lead the “largest ever” Indian contingent to Switzerland during the four-day World Economic Forum 2018 in the Swiss Alps town of Davos on January 23. This made headlines since he is the first Indian PM to be attending Davos in over two...