-NDTV NREGA, today celebrating its 10th anniversary, has received a hostile reception from the current political dispensation. The Rajasthan Chief Minister questioning the need for a law, the then Rural Development minister's suggestion to limit NREGA to a few districts, and the Prime Minister's speech in Parliament in 2015 reveal the BJP's hostility and double standards (NREGA was passed unanimously in 2005). Yet, it would be wrong to lay the entire blame...

-The Hindu New Delhi: No lessons were learned; in fact it is unlikely that any can be learned from the Delhi Government’s odd-even experiment earlier this month as air quality data from the 15-day period has thrown up inconclusive results. After being pulled up by courts for Delhi’s abysmal air quality, the government had announced on December 4, 2015, that it would conduct an experiment to reduce vehicular traffic, thereby reducing pollution....

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government wants to fortify not just mid-day meals in school for children, but many other staples that Indians eat. The government, after proposing to supply fortified ready-to-eat packaged meals for children in anganwadi centres, is now mulling a plan for mass fortification of several staple food items on the lines of iodine-fortified salt. Prime Minister Modi last week heard a presentation from secretaries of the ministries...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Researchers have detected what they say are snapshots of an imminent invasion of northern India by Hinglish that is set to shrink populations of monolingual Hindi and bilingual Hindi-and-English speakers. A study that examined dialogue on the Hindi reality television show Bigg Boss and everyday language practices has suggested that speakers of Hinglish, the hybridised version of Hindi peppered with English vocabulary, could out number speakers fluent in...

-The Indian Express The jury may still be out on the short-term pollution control mechanism, but for the first fortnight of 2016, a majority of Delhi’s car owners persisted in following the policy. DELHI’S COMMUTERS are seldom known for their decorum. But for 15 days starting January 1, even with the odds stacked against Delhi, the road rationing policy gained traction, slowly but surely. The jury may still be out on...