-Tehelka Last year’s Red Fort rhetoric has not been matched by action on the ground, with separate toilets for students remaining elusive as ever One part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Independence Day this year can safely be predicted: the reeling out of statistics to prove that the Swachh Bharat campaign is sweeping the nation. The cleanliness drive launched on 2 October, 2014, was announced from the ramparts of the...

-The Financial Express The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the world’s largest anti-poverty programme, reduced poverty and empowered women but its success has been limited due to lack of work in some of the poorest states, according to a recent report. Comparing two states, Chhattisgarh (strong programme implementation) and Bihar (weak), a study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research and the University of Maryland found that nearly...

-India Infoline News Service   Mumbai: Efforts at the central and state government level to improve rural infrastructure, food distribution and non-agricultural employment opportunities are credit positive because, if sustained, they are likely to lower the credit challenges that India's vulnerability to drought poses. Moody's Investor's Service says that although India (Baa3 positive) may avoid drought this year, its economy remains vulnerable to future droughts or fluctuations in rainfall, and its sovereign credit...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ outfit of CPI (M), has decided to hold a protest of the family members of farmers who committed suicide in the last one year. Families of about 100 farmers, who committed suicide, will sit in front of Parliament to protest the policies of the Narendra Modi Government on Monday. Alarming rise CPI (M) Polit Bureau member and AIKS General Secretary Hannan...

-Livemint.com The problem with the SECC is the absence of cross-tabulations showing the intersections between the seven deprivation sets The original intent of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), whose findings for rural India were made public in June, was to collect information on economic and caste identifiers for access to subsidized food under the National Food Security Act of 2013, and to define a priority set with higher access and...