-The Times of India MUMBAI: Education may be priceless, but the promise of a degree has seen parents across India foot large bills. Those from the rural and urban pockets of southern states spend the most, largely sign up at a private university and finance their children's dream of a technical education. On average, higher education accounts for 15.3% of the total household expenditure in rural and 18.4% in urban areas....

-Scroll.in The number of LPG connections extended under this scheme may be rising rapidly, but LPG usage is not. The aim was to free poor women from smoke-filled kitchens by giving them cooking gas connections. But one year after it was launched, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjawala Yojana seems to have run into rough weather. On paper, the central government scheme which provides free liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, connections to below the...

-The Hindu What happened? On June 1, farmers in Maharashtra went on strike for the first time ever. Their agitation saw violence, and angry farmers spilling milk and throwing vegetables on the road; at one point the strike expanded into a bandh call, where agitators threatened to stop supply to urban markets. This apparently leaderless agitation grabbed the attention of both the government and the urban population, quite ignorant of conditions in...

-ENS Economic Bureau 'Such waiver would prove counter-productive for the RBI’s measures to clean up bank balance sheets' Mumbai: With Maharashtra also joining the farm loan waiver bandwagon, various state governments are expected to waive off $40 billion, or Rs 2,57,000 crore, of farmers’ loans in the run-up to the 2019 general elections in the country, a global banking group has said. Farm loan waivers will amount to 2 per cent of...

-The Hindu While sanitation schemes in India date back to the British Raj, Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is the latest and by far most ambitious iteration. Launched by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the end of 2014, the Rs.9,000-crore scheme aims to achieve an Open Defecation-Free (ODF) India by constructing 12 million rural household toilets across the country before October 2, 2019 — to coincide with Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday. But...