-The Times of India Kendrapada: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has failed to take off in 21 gram panchayats of Kendrapada district. The district collector has decided to take disciplinary action against the sarpanchs and panchayat executive officers of these panchayats. District collector Niranjan Nayak said, "The administration has already issued show-cause notices to the sarpanchs and panchayat executive officers of Bagada, Dashipur, Silipur, Bachara, Balipatana, Baluria, Nilakanthapur,...

-Outlook In the last two decades, more than 300,000 farmers have ended their lives. What can be done? Indian agriculture is important as it feeds an estimated 1.3 billion population of the country and is also burdened with the responsibility of providing Livelihoods to 60 per cent of the people — 780 million people. No foreign country can produce this mammoth quantity of food and supply to India nor any sector...

-The Hindu Business Line We need a holistic policy to address India’s housing shortage issue With the Union Cabinet clearing a ₹81,975-crore plan to build one crore houses in rural areas over the next three years under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY)-Rural, the Narendra Modi government has given concrete backing to its promise of achieving universal coverage in housing by 2022. While providing housing for all has been the dream of...

-The Hindu Business Line India should fine-tune its scheme to make it WTO-compliant The fact that the Centre’s new crop insurance scheme has hit a WTO speedbreaker does not really surprise. The EU, Canada, Australia and Thailand have implicitly said that in its present form, insurance payouts cannot readily be placed in the ‘green box’ — one that exempts certain expenditures from farm subsidy calculations for WTO purposes. They have, in effect,...

-The New Indian Express NEW DELHI: Forty percent of India's population may not have drinking water by 2030, if the water crisis in country is not met seriously, a study has warned. With the country facing a grave water crisis and lack of water conservation, the availability of potable water and ground water has decreased over the years which would result in severe situation in the country after a decade, said an...