-The Indian Express The scheme should be refocused towards creating durable assets in agriculture. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has a significant influence on agricultural operations and cultivation costs. If its present focus on community works can be reoriented to proactively promote improvements on the landholdings of small and marginal farmers through the creation of durable assets, it will be beneficial for agricultural productivity and incomes. Critics say that...

-IANS Panaji: Factors as innocuous as the humble grain-carrying sack to the mighty El Nino could have a varying impact on grain production and delivery this year, experts suggest. Detailed presentations made at a recently-concluded 'Global Grain and Feed Forum' conference in Goa suggest that the occurrence of the El Nino phenomenon in June could to some extent rob India of its monsoon, but also note that poor Quality sacks are also...

-The United Nations A newly issued United Nations-backed expert panel report takes a close look at where and how food waste occurs and recommends a number of actions that could help reduce the 1.3 billion tonnes of food that are squandered worldwide each year. Recently, global food losses and waste has become a high visibility issue and according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), "globally around one-third of food produced...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The working group on rural housing for the Twelfth Five-Year Plan estimated the rural housing shortage in India to be 43.13 million in 2012. Using the latest data sets - Census 2011 and the National Sample Survey housing condition round for 2008-09 - and the improved methodology used by the technical group on urban housing shortage, this paper re-estimates the rural shortage to be 62.01 million in...

-The Telegraph The increase in enrolment in primary education in South Asian countries between 2001 and 2010 has not been matched by an increase in learning outcome of children, threatening economic growth in the region, a World Bank report has said. The report titled Student Learning in South Asia has analysed several studies in areas of learning outcome and the link between poor Quality primary education and its impact on economic growth. The...