-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has slammed 12 states, including Bengal and Bihar, for not taking any steps yet to comply with a Supreme Court directive on compensating workers for delayed wages under the national job guarantee scheme. In a letter this week, the rural development ministry said this was "not an acceptable situation". The letter written by Aparajita Sarangi, the joint secretary handling the MGNREGA scheme, said 20 states had started...

-The Hindu Business Line How trained youth from rural India fare in urban work spaces Yesterday was World Youth Skills Day (July 15), an opportune time to meet some of the country’s rural youth who have recently skilled under government programmes and moved to work in the Delhi NCR region. Outside their comfort zone and working in the competitive, urban environment for the first time, life can be challenging on all fronts. Ask 30-year-old...

-The Indian Express Agriculture Ministry’s harvest estimates don’t square with drought conditions in several cases, raise serious questions of credibility. We have had two consecutive drought years, yet India’s milk production, according to the Agriculture Ministry, has risen from 137.69 million tonnes (mt) in 2013-14 to 146.31 mt in 2014-15 and 160.35 mt in 2015-16. Never before has the country’s milk output grown at these rates — that too, in the face...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Free health-care services during childbirth remain a pipe dream for most of India's poor, whether it relates to diagnostic tests, medicines, transport or even food, despite the Union health ministry launching a "free entitlements" programme five years ago. The families of most women who seek childbirth in government hospitals are forced to pay for supposedly "free" services, at times experiencing catastrophic expenditures likely to accentuate their poverty, two...

-TheWire.in Married women are required to submit a marriage certificate or affidavit at the time of passport creation or renewal, though these documents are not demanded of married men. New Delhi: Despite senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj being at the helm in the Ministry of External Affairs, women passport applicants continue to face discrimination and harassment at regional passport offices and seva kendras across the country. Women applying for passports are finding that...