-OrissaPost.com Raisuan (Odisha): Despite funds being spent from the District Mineral Foundation (DMF) on development of mineral-bearing areas, people in several villages of tribal-dominated Keonjhar district are still deprived of safe drinking water.  Tribals allege lakhs of rupees are being misappropriated by officials in the name of development. The sorry state of the inhabitants of Sankari village under Bansapal block is a case in point. People belonging to the Bhuyan tribe live...

-Scroll.in Doctors say that this could discourage others from donating their organs. In 2009, Dr Ravi Wankhede, a pathologist and resident of Nagpur, donated one of his kidneys to a friend. Wankhede saved his friend’s life but his altruism might have cost him his health insurance. When Wankhede turned 65 two years ago, his health insurance company told him that his policy could not be renewed because the company does not cover...

-The Hindu Many States have initiated ‘reforms’ of the public distribution system that are hurting millions of people India’s public distribution system (PDS) is in danger of being derailed in several States across the country. Recent disruptions of the PDS have taken different forms, from compulsory biometric authentication to so-called direct benefit transfer (DBT). The consequences are alarming, but tend to go unreported. Biometric mix-ups Jharkhand is a prime example of this problem. By...

-The Hindu Business Line The government must universalise social security pensions for the elderly, single women and persons with disabilities and also operationalise the maternity entitlement scheme at the earliest, says Reetika Khera, Associate Professor of Economics at IIT-Delhi. In an interview to BusinessLine, Khera argued against the use of Aadhaar for authentication of beneficiaries and said it has “no role in plugging leakages or in the identification of correct beneficiaries”....

-The Asian Age The increase in the income has also halted migration of local people to other states in search of work. Bhubaneswar: Grappling with financial problems because of non-remunerative character of their age-old agricultural practices, villagers living in hilly areas of Odisha’s Gajapati district have suddenly found enough money coming to their pockets by adoption of traditional methods of irrigation. Sourcing water in the Diversion Based Irrigation (DBI) system from the streams...