-Frontline The Left and other national parties protest against the NDA government's attempts to dilute the MGNREGS by limiting its budget and reducing its reach. IN a rare show of solidarity, representatives of several political parties took issue with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on its controversial proposal to restructure the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The opposition, which was initially confined to the...

-The Hindu Business Line   BARC finds 91.77 ppm of the material in DAP; fertiliser industry says it can't be blamed When the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) found high levels of uranium in fertiliser and soil samples from the Malwa region of Punjab last week, activists in the area were not surprised. They have long been warning about environmental contamination due to excessive phosphate fertiliser use. Local reports indicated that BARC found uranium...

-The Tribune Call follows traces of uranium in Bathinda and adjoining districts Bathinda: Various non-government organisations (NGOs) have demanded a ban on the use of groundwater for drinking and irrigation purposes as it contains a high concentration of uranium. It was in 1995 when researchers of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, discovered the presence of uranium in groundwater. The uranium concentration up to 15 ppb has been declared permissible by WHO but the...

-Pune Mirror Child rights activists demand that Centre amends Child Labour Act to ban children from working in the field Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL) submitted a charter of demands to Pune MP Anil Shirole to be raised in Parliament when the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Bill, 2014, comes up for discussion during the oNGOing session. And, one of CACL's principal demands - perhaps the most important one -...

-Livemint The development economist on the Modi government's initiatives and his stand on them, and MGNREGS The Narendra Modi-led government should consider replacing inefficient subsidies with a basic monthly income for all citizens, says Pranab Bardhan , emeritus professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Bardhan, who recently sparred with economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya in a debate over the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS),...