-The Telegraph New Delhi: The first nationwide survey for drug-resistant tuberculosis has found nearly 3 per cent of first-time patients and 12 per cent of those previously treated infected with multi-drug-resistant TB, lowering uncertainty over the scale of the problem. The survey by the Union health ministry has also revealed wide variations in state-level patterns of drug-resistant TB, indicating that the national-level estimates might Mask local epidemics that need to be addressed...

-TheWire.in Even as schemes have received minimal allocations, this budget signals an important shift in the political narrative. Gone is the focus on jobs, skills, aspirations and empowerment. Arun Jaitley had a difficult choice to make this budget. Maintain fiscal prudence or respond to growing demands for public expenditure in light of growing rural distress and at the same time keeping an eye on 2019. He did this today with great panache....

-Counterview.net Calling the 2018-19 Union budget "highly disappointing", the top advocacy group, Right to Food Campaign (RFC), in a comprehensive analysis, has said, it has "miserably failed to respond to the present situation of rural distress and mass unemployment", adding, "Despite a spate of starvation deaths in different parts of the country, the budget makes no mention of hunger or malnutrition." Thus, RFC says, "There was some hope that the budget would...

-Down to Earth Although farmers vote at least as much, if not more than industrial workers or urban middle classes, elections are not fought around farmers' issues Elections are about numbers. Democratic politics is about stitching together a majority. So, the larger a group, the bigger is its “vote bank”, and greater is its electoral clout. A social group that constitutes a majority can therefore dictate its terms in an electoral democracy....

-Press Note from NREGA Sangharsh Morcha Since the start of the FY 18, we have pointed out the willful misrepresentation of delays in wage payments, incomplete calculation of the full extent of compensation due to workers and the under provisioning of budgets for the program. In August, we released a report by independent researchers, that used the Ministry of Rural Development’s own data to show how the Central Government is deliberately...