-Livemint.com It is important to give preference to those approaches that help the poor the most for every rupee spent, no matter how they are labelled Sometimes in life, it is clear that the direct approach isn’t the best one. This is true in many areas, even when it comes to policymaking. Take, as an example, the area of extreme poverty. It seems logical, at first, that the most effective response should...

-The Telegraph Patna: A project has been launched in Bihar to make structures - primarily water bodies - under the Mahatma Gandhi National rural Employment Guarantee scheme climate resilient. UK's Department for International Development (DFID) is providing technical assistance to the state in this project which aims to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change. Christened "Infrastructure for Climate Resilient Growth (ICRG)", the project is being implemented in 35 blocks spread over West...

-Newsclick.in As a result of the strike almost 1,29,500 Branch Post offices have been reported as closed on May 22. In an unprecedented show of courage and unity, nearly three lakh Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) employees of the Postal Department went on an indefinite strike on May 22. Their grievances - long pending demands of the Gramin Dak Sevaks for regularization as government employees and the ill-implementation of the recommendations of Kamalesh Chandra...

-Civil Society News New Delhi: In 1974, Dr Samir Chaudhuri, a paediatrician working in Kolkata’s slums, founded Child in Need Institute (CINI) to tackle the many dimensions of child malnutrition. It struck him at the time that malnutrition wasn’t just a clinical problem but a complex phenomenon rooted in gender issues. Over the years, led by Dr Chaudhuri, CINI developed deep understanding of the social, economic and political underpinnings of malnutrition...

If someone is a rural male, what occupation would he prefer? A rational person might say that depending on the highest prevailing daily wage rate in a particular occupation (which is subject to seasonal variation) vis-à-vis the rest, he will make his choice.   An exercise undertaken by the Inclusive Media for Change team based on the latest available month-wise wage data of rural men shows that there is a seasonal variation...