-Hindustan Times Eminent social scientist Jean Dreze has alleged that MGNREGS job cards have been cancelled in some states to meet targets of linking them with the Aadhaar project. Dreze’s remarks come amid a political row over the government’s attempt to expand the mandatory use of the country’s unique identity scheme. The scheme, launched under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, ensures employment to the rural population through one job...

-TheWire.in Private schools are flouting guidelines and charging students from economically weak families for books, uniforms and mid-day meals. New Delhi: A March 21 circular by the Delhi Directorate of Education (DelE) strictly instructed private unaided recognised schools in the city to provide free books and uniforms to EWS/DG (economically weaker section/disadvantaged group) category students WHO were selected through a computerised draw for the session 2017-18. However, certain private schools have violated...

-IndiaSpend The drop comes despite a good monsoon in 2016 A good monsoon that led to record sowing and production of pulses–especially tur dal (pigeon pea)–has almost halved their WHOlesale and retail prices in 2017, a year after dal prices skyrocketed to Rs 200 per kg in some cities at the end of 2015. In many state-regulated agricultural markets of major tur-producing states such as Maharashtra and Karnataka, prices have fallen to Rs...

-Business Standard Not only is your privacy stripped stark naked, the system itself is illegal and vulnerable Indians have serious red tape PTSD. We live with chronic anxiety about the documents that get us the entitlements and paid services we need — food, cooking gas, SIM cards, sale deeds, passports and so on. We’re so tyrannised by bureaucracy that when we hear of an official document that might simplify life, we fall...

-The Hindu Sangam, which went on air in 2008, continues its two-hour broadcast in Telugu and reaches out to people of 150 villages in Telangana Musligari Nagamani, a farmer, is listening to the radio sitting a few inches away from her as she cooks dinner on firewood in her tiled-roof house. The broadcast in Telugu is peppered with local colloquialisms and slang. This is how evenings are spent in most houses in...