-Economic and Political Weekly The platform known as the JAM Trinity (an acronym for Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and mobile numbers) may enable a shift from the current Public Distribution System, based on price subsidies, to the direct transfer of benefits. However, it is incorrect to argue that JAM technologies will necessarily lead to the demise of the PDS. State-level experiences of computerisation, recounted here, reveal that the same technologies can...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Jean Dreze, eminent economist and a former member of the National Advisory Council during the UPA regime, was dropped from a high profile economics conference organized by the finance ministry.  Dreze, who has been critical of some of the measures of the NDA government, was invited to speak at the Delhi Economics Conclave on Friday.  "This is the invitation I received and accepted some time ago. On...

-The Hindu An analysis by Right to Information activists confirms that the Central Information Commission is returning requests for information at a high rate to the applicants. Twelve per cent of all second appeals and complaints received by the CIC this year were returned to the senders, with reasons for the return being made available in only a fraction of cases. As reported earlier by The Hindu, the number of cases the CIC...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A survey of Muslim women—victims of triple talaq-- found that 6 out of 10 women were given divorce unilaterally by their husbands. In almost all other cases the divorce was one-sided with the woman informed about it by her relatives, the local Qazi or through sms or e-mail. An earlier study by the NGO Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) had found that 92% of Muslim women...

-Hindustan Times Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh government will prepare a legal framework for leasing land for agriculture that would not put the land owner at a disadvantage but will provide rights to the lease holder, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Tuesday. Chouhan was addressing the media at the conclusion of an exercise launched by the state government to assess the ground situation against the backdrop of the farming crisis. He said that...