-The Indian Express The seeming revival over the last two quarters reverses the trend of declining employment under MGNREGA seen during the first year of the Modi government. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the flagship welfare programme of the previous UPA government, appears to be staging a revival of sorts. And this turnaround is being attributed mainly to better monitoring by the Centre and timely release of funds. The July-September...

-Livemint.com The money came from the Centre, which in April revised the amount farmers get as relief for crop damage New Delhi: Two weeks before 2015 ended, 50-year-old Sukhrani received a new year’s gift from the Uttar Pradesh government. The local revenue officer visited her village in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh to hand out cheques to families whose winter crop was damaged due to unseasonal rains between February and April...

-Business Standard The government is holding talks with states providing cashless health insurance, such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat After providing life cover and accident cover, the government is now working on a universal health insurance plan. To begin with, it will provide a seamless solution to the existing cashless health schemes in states by integrating those with the Centre's direct benefits transfer (DBT) platform. Later, these would be scaled up. "Encouraged...

-The Hindu We need to provide full Internet at prices people can afford, not privilege private platforms. This is where India’s regulatory system has to step in The airwaves, the newspapers and even the online space are now saturated with a Rs. 100 crore campaign proclaiming that Internet connectivity for the Indian poor is a gift from Facebook which a few churlish net neutrality fundamentalists are opposing. In its campaign, Facebook is...

-The Indian Express Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi Monday said the Ministry of Labour has agreed to increase maternity leave to six-and-a-half months. The union government is set to increase the maternity leave for women employed in private firms from the existing 12 weeks to 26 weeks. Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi Monday said the Ministry of Labour has agreed to increase maternity leave to six-and-a-half months....