-Down to Earth The All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee says that the state government arrested farmer leaders on Tuesday to preempt an upcoming protest   In order to pre-empt a farmers' protest around the legislative assembly February 22, the Rajasthan government cracked down on farmer leaders, according to a statement by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), an association of 194 farmer groups across the country. The state government arrested...

-Business Today Social sector spending and investments in infrastructure development could be the highlights of the forthcoming Union Budget 2018-19, credit rating agency ICRA forecasts. It expects increase in budgetary allocations for social infrastructure and social security spending, such as NREGA (rural job security), food subsidy (food security), insurance schemes and welfare Pensions. Larger allocations for infrastructure related to cold chains, etc., considered to boost the agricultural sector and the rural...

-The Hindu Business Line The government must universalise social security Pensions for the elderly, single women and persons with disabilities and also operationalise the maternity entitlement scheme at the earliest, says Reetika Khera, Associate Professor of Economics at IIT-Delhi. In an interview to BusinessLine, Khera argued against the use of Aadhaar for authentication of beneficiaries and said it has “no role in plugging leakages or in the identification of correct beneficiaries”....

-Scroll.in It takes an average of eight years to investigate complaints of corruption against central government officials. When the Bharatiya Janata Party ascended to power at the Centre in 2014, it was helped enormously by a wave of anti-corruption sentiment that has swept India. In the run-up to the election, prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi promised to prosecute all corrupt officials and politicians – including those from his own party. During...

-The Indian Express In Jharkhand, ABBA was first made compulsory for PDS users in Ranchi district in August 2016. By June 2017, it was mandatory in about 80 per cent of the ration shops across the state. This meant, of course, that Aadhaar itself was compulsory — no Aadhaar, no food. Recent events in Jharkhand shed some useful light on the damage done by compulsory biometric authentication in the Public Distribution...