-Scroll.in By one estimate 1.4 crore households have been re-designated as Above Poverty Line during the Rajasthan government’s drive to trim the list of PDS beneficiaries. As the afternoon sun bore down, Naujibai Bhil waited for her turn outside the public grievance office in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district. “The sarpanch cancelled my red ration card and replaced it with a blue one,” said the adivasi woman from Daang Ke Vaas village, holding her head...

-The Indian Express A renewed funding squeeze may undermine MGNREGA’s recent revival, fear civil society activists. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme which guarantees 100 days of wage employment per year to rural households, may have staged a revival in the last two quarters after showing a declining trend in person-days generation during the first year of the Narendra Modi government. But the turnaround could well be temporary,...

Representatives of around 20 civil society organizations and NGOs met the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley as part of pre-budget consultation on social sector on 12 January, 2016. Immediately after the pre-budget consultation, a press conference was held by some of these organizations to convey the media persons what demands/ suggestions were made.   Subrat Das, Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA, http://www.cbgaindia.org/) informed us that during...

-Livemint.com The move is an attempt by the government to stem rural distress as farmers are facing three successive crop failures due to inclement weather conditions New Delhi: The central government is expected to launch a new crop insurance scheme for which the rate of premium paid by farmers will be about a tenth of existing rates. The move is an attempt by the government to stem rural distress as farmers are...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The national weather agency has adopted a new rulebook, tweaking figures that define rain conditions, cold and heat waves and abandoning what it has conceded were ambiguous and unhelpful terminology such as "could" and "may". A forecasting circular issued by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has altered in subtle ways the definitions of cold and heat waves (see chart), introducing uniform cut-offs for locations across the country, and...