-Hindustan Times Contrary to the state government’s claims, the response to the Prime Minister Crop Insurance scheme in Maharashtra is lukewarm. About 49 lakh farmers have registered for the insurance this year against the last year’s number of 83 lakh farmers. On the backdrop of the three droughts in the last four years and the similar situation in some other states, the state and central governments had announced to implement the insurance...

Access to land and its resources is important since it determines the extent of poverty and deprivation one faces. Historically tribal populations and other traditional forest dwellers did not enjoy any legal entitlement such as ownership rights or user rights of the forest lands where they had been living since ages, both communally and individually. The Forest Rights Act (FRA) is, thus, seen as a progressive legislation that attempted to...

-The Indian Express The current bill does not take into account any of the criticism voiced against an earlier version, proposed under the UPA government in 2013; it continues to ignore the Forest Rights Act. A recent controversial bill that outlines a framework for the utilisation of compensatory afforestation funds is being strongly contested and challenged by civil society actors. It raises important questions that are fundamentally connected to forests: Whose...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has slammed 12 states, including Bengal and Bihar, for not taking any steps yet to comply with a Supreme Court directive on compensating workers for delayed wages under the national job guarantee scheme. In a letter this week, the rural development ministry said this was "not an acceptable situation". The letter written by Aparajita Sarangi, the joint secretary handling the MGNREGA scheme, said 20 states had started...

It was a Rashomon moment for the readers of the First Common Review Mission report when they heard activists complaining about the pension system of Rajasthan during a recent press conference held in the capital. The First Common Review Mission (CRM) report, which was prepared during the month of May this year by a team of 32 experts had observed that pension related payments under the National Social Assistance Programmes (NSAP)...