-Down to Earth 2023 is the International Year of the Millets and during the year, efforts would be made to promote this superfood 2023 is the International Year of the Millets and during the year, efforts would be made to promote this superfood. As millets are adapted to grow in dry and arid regions, they attract big businesses and companies in times when climate change is making cultivation of other cereals difficult. But...

- Press release by Right to Food campaign dated 30 December, 2022 The Right to Food campaign has demanded that the government should restore the grain entitlements granted under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY). On 23 December, 2022 the Union government announced that it would discontinue the PMGKAY from 1 January, 2023, thus halving the ration entitlements of eligible people.  Under the National Food Security Act, 2013, (NFSA), all priority category ration cardholders...

-The Hindu Any delay in funds to be paid to States for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme payments is unethical A testy exchange in the Rajya Sabha between the Minister of State for Rural Development, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, and the Trinamool Congress MP, Jawhar Sircar, on the withholding of funds for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in West Bengal laid bare a key implementation issue —...

-The Telegraph State is working to plug all loopholes in MGNREGA execution: Source Calcutta: The Mamata Banerjee government has taken up the task of verifying over 2.3 crore job cards, which make people eligible to work under the rural employment guarantee scheme, in an apparent attempt to weed out “bogus cards”, which, according to the Opposition, were issued to misappropriate central funds. The initiative, sources said, is the fallout of the strict monitoring...

-The Telegraph Scholarship pool for OBCs, minorities reduced New Delhi: The pool of poor schoolchildren from the Other Backward Classes  and religious minorities who are eligible for two government scholarships has been drastically cut short from this year. The Centre has revised two schemes — the Pre-Matric Scholarship for OBCs and the Pre-Matric Scholarship for minorities — by limiting eligibility to students of Classes IX and X, and only those enrolled in...