-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Jharkhand’s bureaucrats have denied thousands of farm workers their legally mandated livelihoods under the guise of plugging leakages in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), say activists. Earlier this month, HT reported that the ministry of rural development had cancelled 93 lakh MGNREGA job cards — of which 2.67 lakh cards were from Jharkhand — to weed out duplicates and cards corresponding to dead beneficiaries. At the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Central Board of SECondary Education (CBSE) has asked its affiliated schools across the country to shut down shops selling textbooks, stationery, schoolbags, uniforms, shoes and similar articles within their premises. The board asked schools on Thursday to strictly comply with its affiliation byelaws and "not indulge in commercial activities". This includes sales through "selected vendors". The directive comes close on the heels of the board's effort...

-The Hindu There is no case for water privatisation. In pushing for it, we are ignoring the key issue, which is better governance, writes Himanshu Thakkar Privatisation of water is unwarranted, unjustified and unnecessary. In pushing for it, we are not really addressing the key issue plaguing the water SECtor, which is a need for better governance. We need a democratic, transparent, accountable and participatory governance in a bottom-up approach, on each...

-The Indian Express Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants doctors to prescribe generic medicines over branded ones. KAUNAIN SHERIFF M answers key questions on the pricing of drugs and beyond. * What exactly has Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on generic drugs? Speaking in Surat on April 17, the Prime Minister referred to the Pradhan Mantri Bharatiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP), which aims to provide cheaper medical drugs to the people. “In the coming days,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Regulatory efforts to get doctors in India to prescribe medicines only through their generic names, initiated about 15 years ago, will need to overcome legal challenges and resistance from SECtions of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, experts said. Senior pharmacologists and industry analysts have also said it will be misleading to presume that prescriptions with generic names will automatically translate into lower medicine bills for patients as studies...