-Press release from NREGA Sangharsh Morcha For the past five days, hundreds of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) workers and their supporters from across the country have gathered at Jantar Mantar to demand the implementation of the employment guarantee act in letter and spirit. They are demanding a substantial increase in the NREGA wages, timely payment of wages, implementation of local plans, expansion of existing entitlements and adequate budget for...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Women and Child Development ministry has written to all states and union territories that there isn't enough evidence to support the use of Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic foods (RUTF) for the management of severe acute malnutrition (SAM). This is a blow to the multi-crore complex of international NGOs who push packaged food as a strategy to address severe malnutrition and companies that produce them. The WCD letter pointed...

-The Hindu Fifty years since the Green Revolution, the architect of the reform highlights the crisis facing Indian agriculture today It is 11 years since agronomist M.S. Swaminathan handed over his recommendations for improving the state of agriculture in India to the former United Progressive Alliance government, at the height of the Vidarbha farmer suicides crisis, but they are still to be implemented. To address the agrarian crisis and farmers’ unrest across...

-The Indian Express The Niti Aayog's report, submitted before the United Nations, acknowledges that anti-poverty programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) helped weaker sections of the society. Vindicating the UPA government’s stand on pulling people out of poverty, India’s Voluntary National Review Report on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals to the United Nations has said that sustained growth of 8.3 per cent from 2004-05 to 2011-12,...

-Firstpost.com I am totally opposed to farm loan waivers as it will undermine the integrity of farmers. When state governments announce farm loan waivers, it is a knee-jerk reaction. Why are farm loans being given at all? Instead, the government should focus on the real issues that affect the agrarian sector. Since it hasn’t, you have agitations hitting the road with farmers protesting. The Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to waive off farmer...