-The Telegraph Calcutta: The Bengal budget has proposed a grant of Rs 50,000 each to 50,000 migrant workers who were forced to return from other states because of demonetisation. By announcing the first such scheme in the country, the Mamata Banerjee government has beaten to the draw the Narendra Modi dispensation. Speculation had swirled around the Modi government that it might share the "gains of demonetisation" with the people through direct deposits...

-Scroll.in The Paharia Adivasi community says they are cheated in their banking transactions and don't know what to do with the debit cards. Just days after the Central government’s demonetisation announcement on November 8 kicked off a major push for digital payments, Kusheshwar Paharia, a resident of Nathgoda village in Jharkhand’s Godda district, received a thick packet in the mail. It contained a letter from the State Bank of India, with which he...

-NDTV The "highest ever allocation" to NREGA (which also led to it trending on Twitter)  in the Union Budget has provided a useful opportunity to raise some pressing issues related to the implementation of the scheme. It is natural, and welcome, that the government turn to NREGA to provide much-needed relief to those whose already precarious lives have been disrupted by demonetization, a man-made economic disaster. Widespread reports of job losses...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: In a reprieve for Lawyers Collective, the NGO run by noted lawyer Indira Jaising, the Bombay high court on Monday by an interim order defreezed the non-FCRA/ domestic Bank Accounts of the organisation. Justice Mahesh Sonak, while admitting the petition filed by Lawyers Collective challenging the cancellation of its registration, also halted the Union government's directive to the charity commissioner to dispose off its assets. "The allegations...

-TheWire.in Despite all the talk of a big push to the agricultural sector, the last Union Budget turned out to be a missed opportunity to provide genuine relief to farmers. The government must rectify this. The finance minister will be presenting the Union Budget 2017-18 at a time when the agrarian economy is in deep crisis. The farmers of the country have been suffering from a longstanding neglect of the sector, which...