-The Indian Express Each of the poverty alleviation programmes seems to have a recurring theme — being funded by the poor themselves. The rodomontade about heralding a new epoch of prosperity six years ago is gradually evaporating. It appears the PM is in the dark about the delivery of his government’s policies, just as the Congress leadership seems clueless about issues on the ground. Four specific pain points unmask the gap between...

-The Telegraph The economic distress caused by unilaterally imposed lockdowns has brought the focus back on the rural job programme Narendra Modi’s cocky statement in Parliament in 2015 about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act being a monumental failure of the Congress regime may have been a political jibe, but it showed that the government had no intention of boosting a programme which, since its inception, has suffered from the...

-Hindustan Times While the Centre has been arguing for a two-lane highway with seven-metre carriageways, some HPC members contended that such a broad width would be dangerous for the fragile Himalayan ecology because it is highly susceptible to landslides A Supreme Court (SC) bench on Tuesday heard Ravi Chopra, the chairman of the high-powered committee (HPC), which is reviewing the Char Dham highway project in Uttarakhand, and accepted the final report submitted...

-TheFederal.com It has no meaningful relationship to actual economic performances of states, has become a tool for govt to push through contentious reforms India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry has released the ranking of States based on the implementation of the “Business Reform Action Plan” (BRAP) for 2019. The BRAP is a set of reform points for States, released by the central government. Relative levels of success in the implementation of BRAP...

-India.Mongabay.com * After a long wait, in 2019, the government of Rajasthan announced the welfare policy for mine and factory workers who suffer from silicosis. * However, patients who are registered online, are largely getting the benefits of the scheme and thousands of certified silicosis patients, who are not registered online, are missing out on the relief. * The state government states that it will soon bring all the sick mine workers online...