-The Indian Express We have turned our back to the intense food and drinking water distress across states India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities. Back in the late-1980s, many states across India were reeling under back-to-back droughts for three consecutive years, not...

-The Hindu The health sector typifies the hands-off policy of the government in areas that impact welfare and livelihoods. An air of anticipation and optimism greeted the formation and installation of the new government in 2014. A widely held view was that it would be much more decisive than the previous dispensation in providing some direction to public policy. Twenty months have passed and the initial sense of optimism has been replaced...

-Livemint.com Academic assessment of the scheme appears far more favourable than evident from the public discourse Ten years after it was launched, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which promises 100 days of employment to every rural household, is back in the news. More people in rural India are seeking employment through the programme across the country, with job numbers scaling a five-year peak. Although the MGNREGS seems to be...

-The Indian Express Jaipur: Kanwar Lal, BJP MLA from Aklera who allegedly beat up members of a civil society group during an accountability march last month, has 20 criminal cases registered against him at two police stations in his constituency. He was also arrested once. Of these, in nine investigations, most involving breaking into houses and tearing up copies of a religious book, his name was later removed, six are pending in courts,...

-The Indian Express Incidentally, the DPCC report claimed that “trends” showed that levels of PM10 and PM2.5 in the city were “decreasing”. New Delhi: A senior scientist with the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) told the Delhi High Court Thursday that pollution levels in the city will never come down to “safe limits” because of its “geographical disadvantage”. Dr M P George of the DPCC told the bench of Justices Badar Durrez...