-The Hindu Opposition accuses the government of trying to dilute the effectiveness of the law New Delhi: The Lok Sabha on Monday passed the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2019 three days after it was introduced. It seeks to amend the Landmark transparency law and bring in changes involving the salaries and tenures of Information Commissioners (ICs) at the States and Centre. As per the amendment ICs — who currently have five-year tenures...

-The Times of India Salem: Salem Periyar University and University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, have jointly conducted a research on the public distribution system (PDS) in selected rural areas of Salem district since 2017. At the end of two-year research, the team has found that the PDS has great support among its users in rural areas and contributed positively to food security Vice-chancellor of Periyar University P KoLandaivel said, “In the coming months,...

-Odisha Economy Discussion Series-2, April 2019, Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies, Bhubaneswar Purpose – The recently launched KALIA scheme of the Government of Odisha is a massive direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme aimed at improving the condition of around three million farm households along with that of Landless cultivators, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, and vulnerable households. However, evaluations of the impacts of the scheme are likely to face difficulties in the...

-TheWire.in While the scheme has laid the foundation, its expansion will, like the GST, require a great deal of political consensus across states. The Narendra Modi government’s interim budget, which was announced in February 2019, brought a bonanza for farmers. Piyush Goyal, who was the finance minister when Arun Jaitley was on medical leave, announced a new scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) under which Rs 6,000 per year...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced on Thursday that residents of 1,797 unauthorised colonies of Delhi will soon get ownership rights to their properties. The bonanza comes a few months before assembly elections in Delhi and two days after the Union housing and urban affairs ministry circulated a Cabinet proposal for formulating a framework for the exercise. The cut-off date for regularisation of these colonies is...