-The Hindu Nearly 120 senior officers reshuffled just hours ahead of Cabinet expansion The day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi rejigged the Union Ministerial Council, there was another major reshuffle under the administrative watch of an outgoing minister — in a statutory body tasked with managing lakhs of crores of rupees. Nearly 120 top officials in the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) that oversees the retirement savings of India’s formal workforce, were transferred...

-Newsclick.in In the lack of specific guidelines and a central monitoring mechanism, the process to review forest rights claims has varied across states. With the Modi government abdicating its responsibility of playing a coordinating role in reviewing settlements of claims on forest land, large number of rejections, in many instances above 50%, are being reported from various states. The Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) is yet to set any specific guidelines...

-Livemint.com Amid a bumper wheat crop, India’s farmers sold more wheat to the government than ever before. Government procurement has only grown in recent years, making farmers wary of any attempt to dial back the role of the state in the farm sector This rabi marketing season has seen the highest procurement of wheat by government agencies in history. At 43 million tonnes, this is 33% higher than the average for the...

The recent Supreme Court of India’s judgments (please click here and here) related to ensuring food security of the migrant and unorganised sector workers THRough the provision of dry ration, running of community kitchens and proper implementation of the 'One Nation One Ration Card' scheme should come as no surprise to us. A recent review of some of the robust studies, which relied on multi-state surveys (or reference surveys), having...

-IndiaSpend.com Knowing whether Covid-19 can be transmitted THRough faeces or THRough virus-laden particles released via sewage is important for India where many still defecate in the open and most sewage is released untreated. Delhi: Faeces of Covid-19 patients contain the virus, sometimes even days after the person tests negative on a Covid-19 swab test. But researchers have been unable to confirm whether the virus could transmit THRough faeces. We look at the...