-Hindustan Times Just how many people in India are poor? The question remains unanswered with yet another government panel failing to define an official “poverty line”. After a year and half of work , a 16-member task force headed by NITI Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya has failed to reach a consensus and suggested to the government that another panel of specialists be asked to do the job. HT has a copy of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Once the central or state government fixes and notifies the retail sale price, retailers cannot sell essential commodities such as pulses, sugar, milk and edible oils at higher prices in the guise of selling such items in packets. Learning from recent experiences of exceptional spurt in prices of pulses and particularly huge difference between loose dal and those sold in packets, the consumer affairs ministry has...

-TheWire.in Finding a time period – keeping in mind exam schedules, agricultural cycles, festivals and public holidays – when elections can be held throughout the country may prove to be difficult. In a television interview recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed that holding elections simultaneously for the parliament and the state assemblies needs to be seriously considered. It would save the country from the permanent electoral cycle, party politics and polarising issues...

-The Hindu Held to account by the Supreme Court, the Central government is using opaque methods to change the key provisions of the employment guarantee scheme and make it targeted instead of universal. There is a pithy saying in Hindi that the elephant has two sets of teeth, one for show and the other to eat. This seems an apt description of the approach of the Narendra Modi government towards the implementation...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Tens of thousands of people who relocated from riot-torn areas of Muzaffarnagar to areas with minority concentration find themselves out of the government's grid even three years after the violence forced them to flee their homes. This is the main finding of a survey conducted by NGOs Aman Biradari and Afkar India of the 65 colonies that have come up in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli to house the 30,000...