-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Center has written to Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan governments, requesting them to consider distribution of free milk to school children as part of the ongoing Mid-Day MEAl schemes -- the way Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have implemented it to raise nutritional level of children. The Center believes that the move will also help milk cooperatives, largely owned by farmers, by providing "ready and steady...

-Hindustan Times London: There are 1.6 billion people living in multidimensional poverty across the world and nearly 440 million of them are in eight large Indian states, according to a new analysis using a unique index developed at the University of Oxford.   The eight Indian states that have similar number of poor as in 25 African countries are Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Odisha, Rajasthan and West Bengal. The poorest...

-The Hindu Business Line Calls for restructuring Nafed for effective procurement of pulses, oilseeds   Bengaluru: The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) has made a pitch for encouraging water use efficiency in agriculture. As part of its non-price policy recommendations for kharif 2015-16, the crop advisory body has suggested that States fix quantitative ceilings on per hectare use of both water and electricity. The farm sector accounts for about 83 per cent...

-The Hindu Huge subsidy of 5 percentage points being leveraged. Pointing to a possible diversion of subsidised funds MEAnt for farmers to non-agricultural uses, a research paper by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) has found that the crop loans extended in India are in fact close to exceeding the total expenditure on farm sector inputs. In 2012-13, the aggregate short-term credit — provided primarily to finance the purchase...

-NDTV Raisen, Madhya Pradesh:  A toilet scam has apparently been flourishing in Madhya Pradesh's Raisen district. This was the conclusion the state government came to, after disbursing nearly 1 crore over the last three years under the State's Samagra Swachta Abhiyaan, sources told NDTV. On paper the district has 4000 toilets -- only a fraction of them can be found on the ground. "The Sub Divisional Magistrate has served notices to 44 sarpanchs,...