-Newsclick.in It remains to be seen how many political parties pledge to protect the urban poor from eviction and homelessness and work for inclusive ‘Smart Cities’. Over 30 civil society groups consisting of slum dwellers, civil society organisations, women groups, other groups working amongst the urban poor, disabled women groups, street vendors, Housing rights activists and so on assembled in Delhi on February 28 to set a new discourse for 2019. This...

-TheWire.in Declining budget allocation and actual expenditure on schemes geared towards agriculture, sanitation and Housing have brought the government's seriousness to the cause of rural welfare under suspicion. Direct benefit transfer has dominated the majority of the discussion on the Interim Budget in the context of agriculture. However, in order to properly understand the seriousness of the government to the cause of farmers and related issues of rural development, we should also...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India may have reduced extreme poverty far more effectively than most of us are aware of. The last official data is eight years old. In 2011, 268 million people were surviving on less than $1.90 a day, the World Bank measure for extreme poverty. The next round of data on household consumption is likely to come out in June, and it may well show a...

-The Indian Express Data collated from the Reserve Bank of India over the last five years shows that growth in credit outstanding for the priority sector has traditionally been rising at a much faster rate than the growth in gross bank credit An uptick in the economy is clear from the improvement in gross bank credit availability but unlike in the past, lending to the priority sector continues to trail, posting single-digit...

-The Hindu It is time to stand by those who are being jailed for activism or persons like Naseeruddin Shah who are raising questions about growing intolerance in the country, Professor Amartya Sen told reporters here on Monday. “There is growing intolerance compared to the past. Many activists are now jailed as Maoist sympathisers…it is extraordinary violation of human rights. Even Naseeruddin Shah is targeted. “We should stand by those who are targeted...