-The Indian Express Eight years after the Sachar committee report on the condition of Muslims and creation of a Ministry of Minority Affairs, a post-Sachar evaluation committee, headed by former JNU professor Amitabh Kundu, has concluded that though a start has been made in addressing development deficits of the community, government interventions have not quite matched in scale the large numbers of the marginalised. Poverty levels among Muslims, the committee found, remained...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union rural development ministry today highlighted the findings of select studies to defend its plan to modify the rural job guarantee scheme and answer critics who have accused it of trying to dilute the programme. A ministry note that cited these studies said the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) needed reforms to increase the creation of productive and durable assets and reduce politics and...

-The Times of India Over 113 million persons were "seeking or available for work", that is, they were unemployed, according to Census 2011 data released today. This huge number made up around 15% of the working age population of about 748 million persons in the 15 to 60 years age group. These unemployed persons were distributed over nearly 70 million families or households. That's about 28% of all households in the...

-The Indian Express Exposure to television and digital media grew by leaps and bounds between 2005 and 2012. From Naxalbari to the Arab Spring, our popular imagination has seen the youth as the harbinger of revolution that breaks down the bastions of privilege. How do we reconcile this with the decisive victory that modern Indian youth have handed to the BJP, whose manifesto focused on entrepreneurship rather than redistribution? I would like...

-The Tribune The UPA's flagship programme MGNREGS changed the employment scene for the rural poor. While 100-day job guarantee was a novel step, loopholes and poor implementation rendered it a liability. The Modi govt hopes to gradually reinvent the scheme, if not entirely scrap it. Midway through the Congress-led UPA's second tenure - believed to be largely the courtesy of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) -...