-The Hindu The solution lies in better schemes that ensure universal coverage for small, marginal and medium-sized farmers To do or not to do? According to reports, the Central government is discussing a scheme to waive outstanding farm loans in the aftermath of widespread farmers’ protests between March and December 2018 . Till now, at least 11 States have announced schemes to waive outstanding farm loans: Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil...

-The New Indian Express According to education experts, better awareness and exposure is the reason why Kerala is doing better when it comes to pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher secondary education Kerala is going great guns when it comes to education when compared to the rest of the country. The fact was proven by the Annual Status of Education Report (2018) which was published in January. The study, which covered 596 districts,...

-The Hindu Citizenship form will have a separate column for them The contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, is pending in Parliament, but the Union Home Ministry has notified amendments to the Citizenship Rules, 2009, to include a separate column in the citizenship form for applicants belonging to six minority communities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Under the amendments, a separate entry in the form will ask the applicant: “Do you belong to one...

-The Hindu Pace to pick up before end date Guwahati: About 4.5 lakh of the 40,07,707 people excluded from the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) have applied for re-inclusion in the list. Simultaneously, the authorities have received 175 applications challenging the inclusion of names of suspected foreigners in the NRC meant for bona fide residents of Assam. The complete draft of the Supreme Court-monitored NRC was published on July 30. It included the...

For long, economists have argued among themselves whether income should be the only criterion for measuring poverty. After all, in real life a person can face multiple deprivations, say, in terms of access to education, health and living standards, among others. The multidimensional poverty index (MPI), which offers a valuable complement to traditional income-based poverty measures, was first introduced in the 2010 Human Development Report (HDR). The MPI looks at...