-The Hindu Business Line Apart from easing labour laws and providing a social security net, a focus on clusters with access to land and capital will help Getting micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), who employ 92 per cent of the workforce, to grow more rapidly should be one of the pillars of any strategy for job creation. This year’s Economic Survey does candidly state that “Our policies must, therefore, focus on...

-Newsclick.in NSSO data shows that of the total land under tenancy in 2011-12, about 36% was taken on lease by top 30% landowners. The State in India, barring the Left-led governments, has never been committed to implementing redistributive land reforms and securing rights of tenants. After 1991, when India adopted the policies of liberalisation and globalisation, the government stopped paying even the lip service to the programme of land reforms as they...

-Down to Earth According to high-level government sources, the survey results contradict the government’s open-defecation free status claim A copy of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO)’s latest survey on the state of toilet coverage and use at the household level in India was doing the rounds among officials. The ‘draft’ report, accessed by Down To Earth, pegged toilet coverage in India at only 75 per cent. Close to 80 per cent of...

-The Hindu The campaign to end open defecation can succeed only if it takes communities with it India’s declaration on the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi that its rural areas are now open defecation-free will be acknowledged around the world as a milestone in its developmental journey. Cleanliness and sanitation were central to Gandhi’s concerns for his vast number of impoverished countrymen, and should ideally have been pursued zealously by governments...

-The Hindu The launch of the Jan Soochna Portal in Rajasthan is a vital cog in access to the right to information The Jan Soochna Portal (JSP) launched by the government of Rajasthan yesterday is a remarkable achievement in furtherance of the right to information (RTI) — especially Section 4 of the RTI Act — that deals with proactive disclosure of information. Transparency must be accompanied by accountability, and that is where...