-The Financial Express Women, employed under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme across the country, get only 78 per cent of the minimum wages paid to men, according to Indian Express report. The Ministry of Rural Development panel report said that not a single state has been able to enforce the payment of full minimum agricultural wages to its women workers. This comes after the panel had recently...

-PTI Ahmedabad: The state government today told the Gujarat High Court that there was a shortage of specialist doctors at community health centres as they were generally unwilling to work in rural areas and small towns. In an affidavit filed in response to a PIL seeking the courts direction to the state to provide better diagnosis and treatment facilities to control vector-borne diseases, the government said that it was fully equipped to...

-Hindustan Times Of the affected states are also those announced farm loan waivers just months ago to bail out beleaguered farming community. With the southwest monsoon season about to end in less than THRee weeks’ time, the government’s drought warning system predicts there could be a drought in 225 districts across “17 agriculturally important states of India,” putting further strain on distressed agriculture sector. According to the government’s National Agriculture and Drought...

-Press Release from Common Cause Common Cause, an organisation dedicated to serving public causes THRough democratic interventions, is shocked that the NDA government has followed exactly the same practice and procedures as the predecessor UPA government in the appointment of the new Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India. The Narendra Modi government, which claims to have zero tolerance for corruption, has missed a golden opportunity to set a high benchmark...

-NDTV The Modi government is finally getting some flak, as it should, for its confused economic policies, epitomised by the demonetisation blunder last year. Despite relatively favourable circumstances (including good monsoons and a decline in international fuel prices), the rate of economic growth is declining quarter after quarter. For manufacturing, it is even close to zero, according to the latest estimates. Statistics related to employment and wages are even more worrying....