-The Times of India PUNE: Nearly three years into the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) for urban areas which promised “housing for all” by 2022, barely 8%, or 3 lakh of the 40.6 lakh houses targeted so far, have been constructed. The situation in the rural version of PMAY is better, but even there only 30%, or 28.8 lakh houses, have been completed against the 95.4 lakh targeted by the rural...

-The Hindu Farming must be treated as a market-based enterprise and made viable on its own terms The week-long farmers’ march which reached Mumbai earlier this month, on the anniversary of Gandhi’s Dandi March of 1930, was unprecedented in many ways. It was mostly silent and disciplined, mostly leaderless, non-disruptive and non-violent, and well organised. It received the sympathy of middle class city dwellers, food and water from bystanders, free medical services...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Labour minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar told the Lok Sabha on Monday that the government had not set a target for job creation.   In a written response to INLD MP Dushyant Chautala’s question on employment over the past three years, Gangwar said, “No target has been set by the government. However, the employment generation ... is the priority concern of the Government (sic).” The minister said the government...

-IANS Farmer suicides have been taking place across India for years now, and studies of rural distress reveal the deeply-rooted, tenacious causes, such as lack of irrigation, fragmentation of land, unsuitability of seeds and inadequate sources of credit. Despite the democratically-elected governments that claim to represent a country where over half the population is dependent on farming, agriculture has been consistently ignored at a steep cost to farmers' lives. Remedies have been...

-TheWire.in The MGNREGA website used to be something of a gold standard on information dissemination. But not anymore. Sanjay Sahni is an anti-corruption activist from Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Formally educated only till Class 5, he used to work as an electrician in Delhi until 2012. He came across the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) website by chance, and after several hours of navigating through the complicated web pages, he saw...