-Livemint.com To stabilize crop prices and make them remunerative, the Swaminathan Commission proposed significant improvements in the implementation of MSPs Across the country, farmers are furious—and rightfully so. Four years ago, they helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power, believing Narendra Modi’s claims that they would no longer suffer official neglect. But since then, conditions in agriculture have got worse. Earlier problems have worsened as farm incomes have been squeezed...

-Press Release from Right to Food Campaign dated 26 February, 2018 Ranchi: Thousands of people – men and women, young and old – walked all the way from Nagri Block towards the Chief Minister’s House in Ranchi today to demand an immediate end to the “DBT for food subsidy” experiment in Nagri. They were prevented from reaching the CM’s house, but they did reach the Governor’s house where they held a...

-CounterView.org A survey, coordinated by well-known academic Jean Drèze and researcher Nazar Khalid, has found an overwhelming popular opposition to the direct bank transfer (DBT) experiment in Jharkhand. Details of the survey: Glitches in the system have deprived people of nearly half of their food rations in the last four months. When they do get their rations, people spend 12 hours collecting them, on average. Most people are opposed to the new...

-The Times of India MEERUT: Every time Priyanka Singh, a teacher at Upper Primary School, Barabanki, had to explain to her students complex scientific concepts that required colour coding to differentiate between ideas, she would wish for a whiteboard instead of the existing blackboard. She had tried getting donations for her school from locals but in vain. Then someone told her about an online fundraising platform for educators in India. She started...

-Livemint.com Latest data as per the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the Saubhagya scheme shows inconsistencies in the number of rural households in the country The opposition has increasingly questioned the government’s record in rural electrification and alleged frequent shifting of goalposts. For example, the deadline for electrifying all villages now stands at May 2018, after missing the May 2017 target. While available data shows that the Narendra Modi government...