-The Telegraph New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi began work with unions and employers today to build support for the biggest shake-up of labour laws in decades, in an attempt to revive a reform agenda that has suffered setbacks ahead of the Parliament session. It is a change of tack for Modi, who is smarting from widespread opposition to land purchase rules he has so far failed, to push through Parliament following...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre today urged the Supreme Court to vacate its two-year-old stay on making Aadhaar cards mandatory for welfare benefits, praising the "tremendous success" of a programme Narendra Modi had trashed as a "scam" while in Opposition. Moving an application in the apex court, the government pleaded that the court stay was hobbling various social-sector programmes, including the direct benefit transfer schemes. It said that while beneficiaries' money was...

-The Hindu Banks continue denying loans to low-income groups, insisting on sticking to a standard EMI route even though they are dealing with a complex social issue. In July 2012, Pradeep Kumar, a 36-year-old resident of Ladpur, a shanty town that sits on the north-western periphery of Delhi, applied for an employment loan at the magistrate’s office in Kanjawala district. Under the Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Yojana or PMRY — a funding policy...

-PTI Amritsar: "In the coming time, we have plans to spend Rs 50,000 crore on farming and irrigation sectors in the country." Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the Centre was planning to spend Rs 50,000 crore on the farming and irrigation sector and plans were also afoot to roll out an insurance scheme exclusively for the farming sector to compensate for crop loss. Admitting that the condition of farmers is...

-The Hindu By abdicating its responsibility to conduct the caste census and turning it into a poverty-cum-caste survey, the previous dispensation at the Centre made the exercise casual and perfunctory. This has been proved by the way the survey has turned out. In August 2010, Finance Minister and head of the Group of Ministers, Pranab Mukherjee, made a reassuring statement in Parliament on behalf of the government of India, that there would...