-Livemint.com The latest round of NFHS-4 shows than even in wealthy states such as Tamil Nadu, about four out of every 10 married women experienced some form of spousal violence Mumbai: A week ago, minister for women and child development Maneka Gandhi said that India cannot have a law to criminalise marital rape, citing various factors such as “level of education/illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mindset of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Vice-President Hamid Ansari today cited "erroneous" media reports to warn that such coverage could erode the media's credibility and impair civil liberties but did not refer to the JNU controversy by name. Ansari, who is also the Rajya Sabha Chair, was addressing a seminar on the "Role of Editors in Today's Media", organised by Rajya Sabha TV. He conceded the importance of speedy coverage in an age of 24x7...

-The Hindu Business Line MFIs are unable to address the needs of self-help groups. They have been hit by the falling growth of SHGs There has been a long-standing debate on the ability and effectiveness of the formal banking system as a vehicle for financial inclusion. The thrust has been to increase the number of small banks, as they play a very important role in the supply of credit to small business...

-Kafila.org The last few months have seen an unusual public engagement around questions of secularism, freedom of speech, sedition and the like, with furious debates everywhere from our campuses, streets and TV studios to the floor of Parliament. The budget session has been enlivened by scenes of high drama, with the leading lights of the Treasury benches bringing colour, sound and fury to their tutorials on patriotism and nationalism. While these high-decibel...

-Frontline.in The increase in the budgetary allocation for the MGNREGA is only marginal. The scheme helped lower the poverty level by 32 per cent between 2004-05 and 2011-12, but government support for it has been declining steadily. In the beginning, economists belonging to the Right and the Left were of the view that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was Merely a populist measure. While the forMer believed...