-The Pioneer Forget about doling out mandatory unemployment allowance under the Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), majority of the Congress-ruled States in the country are yet to notify unemployment allowance rules under the UPA's flagship rural job scheme launched in 2007. The rules mandate the States to pay the daily allowance to a registered worker if he is not provided a job within 15 days of the receipt...

-The United Nations Global and national efforts to end preventable deaths of children under-five years of age saved some 90 million lives in the past two decades, but at the current rate, a universal promise to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015 will not be reached, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported today. "Yes, we should celebrate the progress," said Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director. "But how can we celebrate...

-The Telegraph Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government today announced a scheme to allow big private investors to directly procure farm produce - a segment that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee could not liberate from the stranglehold of the Forward Bloc. The scheme titled Brihat Krishak Bazar Yojana, which loosely translates into mega farmer market programme, seeks to "connect the local market to high-growth demand centres" and weed out middlemen. The project will allow private developers to...

-PTI GUWAHATI: At least 10 districts of Assam were reeling under flood water with the Asia's largest river island Majuli and the famed Kaziranga National Park being the worst affected, officials said on Saturday. Rising water of the Brahmaputra has inundated vast tracts of land in Kaziranga's Burapahar, Bagori and northern parts of Agratoli with three animal casualty reported. Two deer were knocked down by speeding vehicles in Harmoti area when they were...

-The Hindu Jagdish Bhagwati's attacks on Amartya Sen are based on a series of misattributions and obscure the real issues on which the two economists differ Rich and lively public debates are the raison d'être of any democracy. But the recent attacks by Professor Jagdish Bhagwati on Dr. Amartya Sen confound the real issues on which Sen and Bhagwati differ. Bhagwati tries to position himself as a proponent of growth that would benefit...