-Livemint.com * Disaggregated data contradicts the rosy picture that national accounts paint of our performance * It’s premature to conclude that a recovery is underway, as our GDP rise in 2020-21’s third quarter was on a very low base. Also, other data sets reveal that distress remains widespread.  Estimates of growth in the third quarter of 2020-21 along with advance estimates of the full year were released last month by India’s statistics ministry....

-The Hindu Parliamentary panel pushes for it in all government schools in coming academic year The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education has recommended that all government schools start providing free breakfast in the coming academic year, as part of an expansion of the mid-day meal scheme envisaged by the National Education Policy. However, Education Ministry officials say a severe funding crunch is likely to delay the initiative. Free breakfasts would involve an additional...

-Scroll.in The report by Varieties of Democracy Institute said India is as autocratic as Pakistan in censorship and worse than Bangladesh and Nepal. India has turned into an “electoral autocracy”, an analytical research project by Sweden-based Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute said. The research institute had said last year that the Bharatiya Janata Party now closely resembles a “typical governing party in an autocracy”. A report of the organisation, which conceptualises and measures democracy,...

-Scroll.in Modi government’s flagship Ujjwala scheme continues to hand out new gas connections without fixing the problem of unaffordability. At the start of every monsoon, Doli Kumari’s family refills their LPG cooking gas cylinder and uses it for three or four months. As the rains recede in their village of Tarauna Bhojpur in Bihar’s Araria district, the family switches back to burning wood for daily cooking. This monsoon, however, the family plans not...

-The Hindu Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development slams government laxity in raising amounts. The Centre must increase the “meagre” pensions provided for poor senior citizens, widows and disabled people, said the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development in its report submitted to the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. The panel also slammed the government’s “laxity in raising the amount, pointing out that recommendations to increase the sums have been made for the...