-The Hindu The PMJDY celebrates success on its website, but thousands of Marys remain outside the banking system. This won’t change unless the scheme alters both design and implementation A few months ago, when the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was still being spoken of as a success for the largest number of accounts opened in a day, earning the government a Guinness world record, I visited the branch of a...
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Swaminathan MSP: Solution to Agrarian Crisis and Farmers’ Distress? -Ranjit Singh Ghuman
-Economic and Political Weekly Farmers' unions and political parties have been demanding the implementation of the Swaminathan minimum support price (cost plus 50%) to address agrarian crisis and farmers' distress. But they have not raised demands for the implementation of the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers, which have the potential to provide lasting solutions. Ranjit Singh Ghuman (ghumanrs@yahoo.co.uk) is a Nehru SAIL Chair Professor, Centre for Research in Rural and...
More »‘Scientific ambitions behind DNA Profiling Bill’ -Vidya Venkat
-The Hindu Legal researcher Usha Ramanathan speaks about the the modified draft Bill which continues to raise several critical concerns relating to privacy, ethical usage of DNA samples and DNA database. This week, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) uploaded a slightly modified draft of the Human DNA Profiling Bill on its website, opening up the controversial Bill, now tabled in Parliament, for public scrutiny. Legal researcher Usha Ramanathan, a member of the Committee...
More »We are nowhere near the sanitation target -Sushmita Sengupta
-Down to Earth The maiden Independence Day speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from the premises of the Red Fort last year, was full of how to make India clean by 2019. Soon after, the PM launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) in October, with construction of toilets as its main component. Unlike the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, a similar scheme launched by the UPA government, SBM delinked itself from the Mahatma...
More »Midday meals to lose gas cushion -Basant Kumar Mohanty
-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has decided to stop reimbursing states for the unsubsidised cooking gas cylinders they are forced to buy for the school midday meal scheme. A food security adviser expressed the fear that the Centre's decision may force states to fall back on firewood. But a former member of the National Advisory Council backed the decision, saying states should make use of the additional money they were getting...
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