-The Hindu Business Line The Finance Ministry has asked the Agriculture Ministry to complete the payout of two instalments of Rs.4,000 to farmers under the PM Kisan scheme by September 30. This is to boost rural demand in the coming festival season. PM Kisan or Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi is an income support scheme. It provides Rs.6,000 in three equal instalments annually. Initially, the coverage was limited to small and marginal...

-Livemint.com Public programs like MGNREGA are less successful in raising wages in regions characterized by historical inequality, finds new study When it was launched in 2006, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was envisaged to boost rural economies by providing the rural poor with 100 days of guaranteed public employment and raising rural wages. But its intended benefits may have eluded those who needed them the most, a new...

-The Hindu The launch of the Jan Soochna Portal in Rajasthan is a vital cog in access to the right to information The Jan Soochna Portal (JSP) launched by the government of Rajasthan yesterday is a remarkable achievement in furtherance of the right to information (RTI) — especially Section 4 of the RTI Act — that deals with proactive disclosure of information. Transparency must be accompanied by accountability, and that is where...

-The Hindu United Nations-led Conference to Combat Desertification assures ‘neutrality’ by 2030. New Delhi: A two-week long United Nations-led Conference to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) ended with a commitment to achieve Land degradation neutrality by 2030. Such neutrality is defined by the U.N. as ensuring that enough Land is available across the world to ensure a sustainable future. The Delhi Declaration, a consensus document, agreed upon by more than 100 countries “welcomed” the proposed...

-Newsclick.in The roots of the present economic slowdown squarely lie within the neoliberal trajectory, which has led to a crisis of overproduction. Demonetisation and ‘hasty’ GST only aggravated it. With former prime minister Manmohan Singh resurfacing on the political Landscape and articulating once more the orthodox neoliberal position, one can now clearly discern three distinct perspectives on the current economic slowdown. The first is the orthodox neoliberal position that Singh has now articulated....