-The Hindu Other States in India can study how the family planning programme has worked in Kerala and incorporate those features in their own programmes The recent tragedy of several women losing their lives in the state-sponsored tubectomy camp in Takhatpur, Chhattisgarh, has caused severe damage to the national family planning programme. This, however, is not an invalidation of the importance of sterilisation as an integral part of the programme, but only...

-Frontline The Left and other national parties protest against the NDA government's attempts to dilute the MGNREGS by limiting its budget and reducing its reach. IN a rare show of solidarity, representatives of several political parties took issue with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on its controversial proposal to restructure the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The opposition, which was initially confined to the...

-PTI Government today said it is promoting use of organic fertilisers and studies have shown that farm yields have not fallen where use of chemical fertilisers was restricted. Rural Development Minister Birender Singh told Lok Sabha a scheme to empower woman farmers has made positive impact as it supplements their income and use of manures like cow dung is encouraged under the scheme. "Yields have not gone down. It has come up......

-The Hindustan Times Even with the prospects of a year of high growth and low prices, a clutch of disquieting data on the ground suggests that things are still tough, potentially testing the Narendra Modi-led government's ability to pull the economy up. Output in factories has fallen sharply and a depressing farm season this winter, along with a fall in rural wages, could prolong recovery. Simply put, the drag this time...

-Livemint The development economist on the Modi government's initiatives and his stand on them, and MGNREGS The Narendra Modi-led government should consider replacing inefficient subsidies with a basic monthly income for all citizens, says Pranab Bardhan , emeritus professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Bardhan, who recently sparred with economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya in a debate over the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS),...