-The Indian Express The problem is under-employment. It won’t be resolved if the residually-employed are notionally shifted from the informal to formal sector. In an article in January, Soumya Kanti Ghosh and Pulak Ghosh (Ghosh and Ghosh) claimed that seven million new jobs have been created in the formal sector. Their claim is based on the increase in registration under the Employees Provident Fund (EPFO), National Pension Scheme and Employees State Insurance...

-CaravanMagazine.in The economist Jean Drèze’s book, Sense and Solidarity, published in late 2017, deals with the impact of Aadhaar on social-welfare programmes, such as the National Food Security Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, among other things. Drèze was a member of the United Progressive Alliance government’s advisory council, which designed the NFSA and MGNREGS. He co-authored some of the essays in this book with colleagues and...

-The Hindu Social audits ensure a citizen-centric mode of accountability The breakdown of institutions has underlined the fact that democracy — and especially public funds — need eternal public vigilance. But in India, the elites close ranks to neutralise voices of dissent and alarm, thus preventing public vigilance. Democratic governance needs the citizen to be legally empowered to ask questions, file complaints, and be a part of the corrective process. Social audits, as...

-Economic and Political Weekly A diverse diet based on local foods is the best alternative to feed millions of malnourished children. What young children in anganwadi centres should be fed as supplementary nutrition is once again under the scanner arising from a difference of opinion between the Niti Aayog and the Minister for Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi. There were news reports last week indicating that the minister has been pushing...

-The Hindu NITI Aayog member says national health scheme will aim to keep cheaters out Mumbai: To curb illegal mass surgeries, policy makers working on the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) are planning to restrict surgical procedures like hysterectomies and appendectomies to public sector hospitals. Dr Vinod Paul, member, NITI Aayog, said on Saturday that such procedures could also be dropped from the scheme. “Procedures like these can be misused. We have...