-The Hindustan Times The current electoral discourse shows an amazing disconnect with the actual reality of the deteriorating Livelihood conditions of our people. The other day, the BJP PM aspirant thundered in Bangalore that the BJP seeks to create confidence and not fear among the people. The 2002 Gujarat communal pogrom makes this sound incredulous. There is nothing in the BJP's campaign pitch that offers any solution or a methodology for...

-The Telegraph Thiruvananthapuram: The Centre's move to implement an ecology panel's report on conservation of the Western Ghats has provoked a call for a 48-hour civil disobedience agitation by the Catholic Church in Kerala, starting Sunday midnight. The Church claims the K. Kasturirangan report, notified on Wednesday, will hit the Livelihoods of farmers living in the "high ranges" - foothill areas bordering the forests - and force them to relocate. Green activists deny...

-Down to Earth Gives details to finance ministry on the impact of revised budget estimates on individual schemes The steep cut in budgetary allocations for social welfare schemes in an election year seems to have become a great cause of worry for Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh. He has shot off a letter to finance minister P Chidambaram, expressing displeasure over the proposed Rs 15,000 crore funds cut in rural development...

-Down to Earth Ministers write protest letters to prime minister and finance minister, saying it would greatly impact ongoing schemes The Congress-led UPA government has been harping on its pro-poor schemes in the run up to the elections early next year. But it has effected a drastic cut in budgetary allocations for social welfare schemes. The move is reportedly prompted by the urgent need to contain current account deficit (CAD) to below...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Ahead of the general elections next year, the government will recruit 140 young graduates for a three-year fellowship scheme to oversee better delivery of flagship programmes in backward and remote districts in the country. This is an extension of the ongoing Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellowship (PMRDF) scheme and will cost the government Rs 36 crore for a twoyear fellowship while in the last year of...