-The Times of India As the clock ticks towards the general elections in a few months time, a major crack appears to be opening up in the government. The mandarins of finance ministry - presumably with the sanction of finance minister P Chidambaram - have proposed huge cuts amounting to over Rs 20,000 crore in spending on popular flagship schemes like the employment guarantee scheme, the rural housing scheme, the village...

-Frontline In a situation of increasing life expectancy and crumbling traditional support structures, a universal social pension scheme that does not rely on contribution by a person or an employer can help the elderly. INDIA prides itself on being a "young" society, likely to benefit from a demographic dividend as children and young people move into working age groups over the next decade. This optimistic view assumes that society will be able...

-The Telegraph Kolkata: An NGO set up in response to the 2002 carnage in Gujarat has decided to carry out awareness programmes across the country in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections to highlight the potential pitfalls of Narendra Modi becoming Prime Minister. "A dream of development is being shown to the people of India.... But that is not the reality. There is another side to the story of Gujarat,...

-Outlook Baripada (Odisha): Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today launched a scheme for providing financial assistance to women self-help-groups (SHG) here. One lakh SHGs have been identified to be covered under the scheme in Odisha of which Mayurbhanj district accounted for 8000. Each SHG would be provided a financial assistance of Rs 10,000 with an expenditure Rs 100 crore from the exchequer, the Chief Minister said. Stating that SHGs comprising SC, ST, BPL...

-The Hindu Is the voting population a true reflection of the country's population? New data for Delhi indicates that marginalised groups are less likely to be registered or vote, but the election commission is narrowing this gap. An Election Commission of India-commissioned survey shows that Muslims, new migrants, women and young people were less likely to be registered and vote than others. The ECI's own analysis of its data also shows that...