-The Indian Express   Socio-economic census data provides valuable pointers — and reality checks — for policymakers    The socio-economic and caste census (SECC) 2011 paints a picture of rural India weighed down by landlessness and lack of non-farm jobs. More than 60 per cent of the 17.91 crore rural households covered under the census qualified as deprived on 14 parameters. This is a set of people who do not own a two-wheeler...

-DNA Mumbai: What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an irrigation project? Water? Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Union Union Ministry for Forests, Environment & Climate Change (MoEF). How else would it have cleared the the Rs 4,845 crore, 23.66 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) Krishna Marathwada Lift Irrigation Scheme (KMLIS) without water availability? The environmental clearance given on 24th June...

-The Hindu If Maharashtra is trying to identify children who are not getting educated, as per RTE, it has to include those children who are not studying the core subjects, be they in a madrasa, Vedic pathshala or any other religious or community school Maharashtra’s recent decision to conduct a survey of what it calls “non-school going children” seems to have created a storm. Political parties are now up in arms calling...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday said the direct transfer of cooking gas subsidies into the bank accounts of users will help the government cut its subsidy bill by around Rs 12,700 crore, or around a quarter of the funds spent last year. The minister used the successful transition to direct benefit transfer (DBT) system to argue for extending the scheme to other subsidies, something that...

THE controversy over Maggi instant noodles has once again highlighted the issues plaguing food safety in India. Not only does the issue raise critical questions about safe food production by multinational companies such as Nestle but it also foregrounds the institutional fault lines when it comes to ensuring food safety. Frontline spoke to Sunita Narain, who heads the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the organisation instrumental in initiating...