-The Hindu A successful pilot project involving outreach staff at the State’s only de-addiction facility exclusively for women has been discontinued While Punjab is waging an all-out war against drugs, it faces a Herculean task in curbing substance abuse by women, who have often been overlooked in the discourse. Against this backdrop, a recent video showing a young, inebriated woman by a roadside bench in Kapurthala has caught the glare of public...

-Press release by Satark Nagrik Sangathan dated October 11, 2022 Tomorrow (October 12, 2022) marks 17 years of implementation of the RTI Act in India. The law has empowered millions of people to seek information and hold the government accountable. Under the RTI law, information commissions are the final appellate authority and are mandated to safeguard and facilitate people’s fundamental right to information. Information commissions (ICs) have been set up at...

-Livemint.com What will happen to the PMGKAY beyond December 2022? It cannot continue indefinitely in its present form. At a time when central banks all over the world are into a round robin of interest rates hikes, in a context of impending recession in several major world economies, an unending war, and uncertainty about energy availability and pricing going into the northern hemisphere winter, the only cheering news was India’s further extension...

-The Hindu A book brought out by NABARD, authored by R.S. Deshpande, says Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana carries the baggage of the earlier failed crop insurance schemes A book on the theme “Rainfed Agriculture and Droughts in India” (2022) brought out by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) argues that crop insurance is not a “perfect medication” any more for farmers hit by natural calamities such as floods...

-The Telegraph Overall current account deficit in July rises to $21.04 billion (merchandise and services), commerce ministry reports on Friday Mumbai: Reserve Bank of India deputy governor Michael Patra has tried to soothe concerns about the anticipated surge in India’s current account deficit, suggesting that the country will not be roiled by a crisis if the CAD climbed to anywhere between 2.5 and 3 per cent of GDP. “Our experience has been that...