-Down to Earth Even after an order by the Supreme Court, the government has not released the payments The flagship scheme for rural employment generation, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), is facing severe fund crunch this year, resulting in unpaid dues of Rs 3,066 crore in wage payments in 19 states. Around 87 per cent of the scheme’s budget for this year has already by exhausted. A civil...

-The Hindu Business Line Come November, the Jan Aushadhi initiative completes nine years. But despite its recent achievements, there's more work to be done. PT Jyothi Datta writes Earlier this year, Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister Ananth Kumar vowed to end the “medicine mafia” in the country by opening many more Jan Aushadhi kendras, stores that sell generic medicines at affordable prices. Kumar was echoing the mission outlined by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley...

-Scroll.in JNU professor Himanshu says the economic slowdown is not the result of a one-off event like demonetisation, the slump began almost two years ago. The economy is in a trough. The first quarter of 2017-2018 saw the growth of gross domestic product (the total value of all goods and services produced in a country in a year) drop to 5.7% from 7.9% in the corresponding period last year – the...

-Hindustan Times India’s public expenditure on health is rising, but not as fast as its burgeoning population of 1.3 billion, which grow by 26 million each year It’s not the lack of oxygen that kills hundreds of children in hospitals of Uttar Pradesh each year, it’s India’s abysmal public health delivery system. “Gorakhpur is the symbol of the collapse of the primary health care system. Why should people be forced to travel 200km...

-The Indian Express The failure of populist rural credit schemes stems primarily from poor understanding of farm indebtedness in the first place. From the 1970s, a lot of private investment in tube-well irrigation, farm mechanisation and allied agricultural activities took place with bank credit support. After the establishment of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in 1982, institutional credit flows not only accelerated, but also exhibited diversification to fund livestock...