-The Hindustan Times The rural development ministry would be asking the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to relax norms to acquire land for projects by scrapping mandatory consent provision for public private partnership (PPP) projects and reducing it to 50% from the existing 80% for private acquisition. The slew of changes in the land acquisition law 2013 for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's approval means that consent of half of the affected families would...

-The Hindu   Chennai: In a fresh bid to widen access to low-cost quality food, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has ordered opening of 360 more "Amma Unavagams," the popular eateries, across Tamil Nadu. Among them 200 eateries would be set up in the Chennai Corporation limits. With this, the State would soon have 654 such canteens serving quality food at affordable rates. In expanding this welfare scheme which benefits the poor, daily wage earners,...

-The Hindu   UDHAGAMANDALAM: The Union government favours a participatory approach to protecting natural resources, especially the precious soil and water, A.K. Sikka, Deputy Director-General (National Resource Management), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), said on Monday. He was inaugurating a six-day advanced training programme on planning and design of engineering structures in the watershed management programme organised by the Central Soil and Water Conservation Research and Training Institute (CSWRTI) under the aegis...

-The Indian Express   MGNREGA is beset with failures of planning, execution, monitoring and accountability. This election season, we have seen the BJP seeking the people's mandate on the slogan "sab ka saath, sab ka vikas". The Congress harps primarily on a "we gave you" list. The first in this list is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA). The 11th Five Year Plan recognised that 30 crore people lived below the...

-The Indian Express How Punjab is making the best use of the flawed public distribution system. Inclusive economic growth is a political, economic and social necessity. The question is: what is the right strategy to ensure this? Most of our programmes to help the underprivileged have suffered from leakages and inefficiencies, so that the benefits have not accrued to the targeted groups but the strain on our fiscal deficit remains. Subsidies are...