-The Times of India Over two crore households have been denied work under the fund-starved rural job guarantee scheme in the past eight months. This is a direct result of the deep cuts in funding of the scheme and various other changes initiated by the Modi government. With the employment situation still dire and the new government's long-term efforts to catalyze industrial growth still on the drawing board, the failure of...

-The Hindu To meet the fiscal deficit target for this year, the Central government is brutally slashing social sector allocations but is keeping expenditure cuts for the physical infrastructure sectors at a minimum. This re-aligning of plan outlays across sectors by the Finance Ministry is in line with the government's priorities. The Narendra Modi government views infrastructure spending as growth-enhancing and an essential element of its plans for reviving the economy. The...

-The Indian Express Eight years after the Sachar committee report on the condition of Muslims and creation of a Ministry of Minority Affairs, a post-Sachar evaluation committee, headed by former JNU professor Amitabh Kundu, has concluded that though a start has been made in addressing development deficits of the community, government interventions have not quite matched in scale the large numbers of the marginalised. Poverty levels among Muslims, the committee found, remained...

There is some good news amid gloom! Preliminary findings of a survey in India as quoted by the Global Nutrition Report 2014 shows that prevalence of malnutrition among children aged below 5 years has come down between 2005-06 and 2013-14, even though we have a long way to go. (See links and bullet points below). The survey on malnutrition and hunger, called the Rapid Survey on Children (RSOC), was conducted after...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Law minister Sadananda Gowda on Wednesday ruled out taking the ordinance route for any amendments in the Land Acquisition Act though he said the government was in favour of bringing some changes. "There is a proposal. The call has to be taken by the concerned (rural development) ministry," he said, without elaborating on the proposed changes. Finance minister Arun Jaitley had last week said the government will...