-The Hindu The challenge for the Modi government is to evaluate what works in development programming before making large spending decisions Governments in India have always launched big-ticket social development programmes with ambitious goals. The Narendra Modi government is no exception. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan aims to make India open defecation-free by 2019. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana's financial inclusion programme set a target of opening 10 crore bank accounts by January...

-The New Indian Express   BALANGIR: The ongoing socio-economic survey to prepare the beneficiary list for the National Food Security Act (NFSA) is scheduled to be completed next month. The process, though, is going to leave out lakhs of migrants from Western Odisha districts, Balangir in particular, who will not be able to enrol themselves. This is because the seasonal migration cycle, which begins from September to June will deny the migrants a...

-The Hindu Business Line Though migration of labour from the east has helped revive the plantations in southern India, questions remain on the long-term implications, Vishwanath Kulkarni reports As the harvest season starts in Coorg, Karnataka, coffee planter MC Kariappa has a lot of issues to contend with - productivity, weather and, the biggest worry of all in recent times, paucity of labourers. So when a dozen labourers from Assam landed at...

-The Hindu With a plethora of government departments and international organisations putting out so much statistical data in the public space, often contradicting one another, it is the government's duty to clear the air with up-to-date and coherent statistical data linking social and economic indicators Purchasing Power Parity or PPP has validated a long held surmise that the poorer countries are not as badly off as they are made out to be...

-The Hindu Business Line   Small and marginal farmers in rainfed regions are trapped in a losing battle with agriculture - and with life The lot of the poor Indian farmer keeps deteriorating with the passage of time. According to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data released on December 19, 2014, during the last decade, the bloated debt of Indian agricultural households increased almost 400 per cent Even the number of heavily...