-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...

-Livemint New Delhi: A sharp reduction in the percentage of underweight children has helped India improve its hunger record, shows the Global Hunger Index (GHI) released on Monday. India now ranks 55 among 76 emerging economies, but is still trailing behind countries like Thailand, China, Ghana, Iraq, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Please click here to read more. ...

-PTI NEW DELHI: With over 1.98 lakh RTI petitions remain pending in state commissions in last seven year, activists have stressed on the need to make the process to seek information under the Act easy and use it as a tool to bring transparency in development process. Please click here to read more. ...

-The Business Standard The response by Indian industry and civil society to Satyarthi's honour has been conspicuously absent When an Indian citizen had last won a Nobel Prize - Amartya Sen for Economics in 1998 - the prize was much celebrated in the country, and the winner was awarded a Bharat Ratna the next year. But that was 16 years ago. Today, even as another Indian, Kailash Satyarthi, is set to jointly...

-FirstPost.com Farmer suicides haven't gone up in Maharashtra: Why is Modi tweaking data? Prime Minister Narendra Modi is aggressively attempting to make the high incidence of farmers's suicide in Maharashtra an important election issue. The BJP is probably trying to make inroads in rural Maharashtra where it is not known to be strong traditionally. Modi has quoted government statistics to suggest Maharashtra has had more than 10 farmers committing suicide every day. Needless...