-Press release by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha and Peoples' Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) dated 9 July, 2019 Even as many parts of the county suffer from drought, the new government at the centre has allocated a mere Rs 60,000 crores for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) for the ongoing financial year. This is Rs 1,084 crore less than the revised budget estimate for 2018-19. Expenditure would have been much...

-IndiaSpend.com Mumbai: As 128 children died of encephalitis in Bihar over 19 days to June 21, 2019, a new study reports that the state’s rural population prefers government investment in public healthcare over roads, jobs and cash transfers. In a survey conducted by the Brookings Institution, an American research group, in an administrative block of Bihar, 3,800 respondents--comprising the poor, less-educated and disadvantaged caste groups--were asked to make a choice: an incremental...

-The Indian Express CEO Surendra Kumar did not respond to calls for comment on the BJD allegation. BJP leader Pratap Sarangi, however, said: “They (BJD) are desperate and know they will be defeated. That is why they are attacking the CEO Odisha.” Bhubaneswar: The ruling BJD Monday alleged that the Odisha Chief Electoral Officer had stopped implementation of the Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (Kalia) scheme, the state government’s...

-IndiaWaterPortal.org Calculating water availability and crop budgeting can prevent over-extraction of groundwater and mounting farm debt. At 42 years, Bhagwat Ghagare seems young. But he is old enough to have seen his village prosper and decline many times. Farming had traditionally been small and distress migration rampant at Kumbharwadi in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. Between 1998 and 2002, a non-profit organisation, Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), initiated a work related to rainwater harvesting...

-Hindustan Times From a constitutional point of view, the scheme fails the tests of rationality and non-arbitrariness Earlier this month, the Supreme Court indicated that it would hear the long-pending constitutional challenge to the electoral bonds scheme. The electoral bonds scheme, which was introduced by the government in early 2018, provides new channels for private funding of political parties, and has been subjected to severe criticism, including by a former Chief Election...