-The Indian Express Cash transfers instead of food has been widely debated with several criticising it for not being an actual substitute for take-home rations, which is a mix of cereals, fats, sugar and pulses, with added micronutrients. In a major policy shift, the Ministry of Woman and Child Development (WCD) has prepared a proposal to substitute take-home rations, given in aanganwadis for infants under three and pregnant and lactating mothers,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Women and child development (WCD) minister Maneka Gandhi today suggested spreading awareness among schoolchildren so that they can complain about sexual harassment under a central law. Maneka made the suggestions in a meeting with HRD minister Prakash Javadekar held against the backdrop of the murder of a seven-year-old boy in Gurgaon's Ryan International School. The two leaders discussed several measures, including sensitising children to file complaints under the...

-Scroll.in Inability of local officials and infrastructure to cope with the complex technologies driving the scheme could be leaving lakhs of workers unpaid. This year’s Economic survey lists several “improvements” in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act brought about since 2014-’15. Mostly, these “improvements” are technological initiatives – greater convergence with other programmes, “geo-tagging” of MNREGA assets. They have not made a difference on two of the stated purposes – timely...

-The Indian Express Thomas Piketty points to the widening income disparities that have accompanied economic growth in India, which endanger social stability The paper by Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel, ‘Indian Income Inequality 1922-2014 — From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?’, is now in the public domain. Piketty needs no introduction — his Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been one of the most influential books on economics in the past decade....

-The Times of India NASHIK: The average wholesale onion price fell by 35% at the country's largest wholesale onion market at the Lasalgaon Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) on Thursday after the income tax department carried out surveys and searches in the offices, godowns and homes of seven onion traders in Nashik district of Maharashtra. After the sudden crash in wholesale onion prices, farmers stopped the auction at Lasalgaon and did...