-The Hindu Business Line It has worked as a rural safety net. But the Centre has other budgetary priorities A decade after the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme came into force, the NDA government has come around to accepting its usefulness — and that, in a difficult agriculture year. Last February, the Prime Minister disparaged the programme for merely digging pits. But only a few days ago, the finance minister...

-Business Standard The state demands that the insurance scheme should cover the produce lying in market yards, waiting to be bought by agencies Chandigarh: The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, hailed as one of the most farmer-friendly crop insurance schemes of independent India, has run into rough weather in Punjab. The state is at loggerheads with the Centre over the efficacy of the crop insurance scheme. "The new scheme provides an indemnity level...

-The Times of India It's 8:00 am on a Sunday and outside Denzong Cinema in Gangtok's Lal Bazar, the otherwise languid atmosphere is punctured by grocers of two kinds. On one side of the cinema are those who sell vegetables, fruits and spices sourced from outside Sikkim, mostly from Siliguri, 115 km south in West Bengal. On the other side of the cinema, almost completing a triangle, are farmers from the...

-The Hindu It is now a decade since the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was launched, and it can be said with reasonable assurance that the programme has been largely successful in living up to what it set out to do: provide employment to India’s rural poor and improve their livelihoods. Sceptics of the spending programme, launched in 2006, had raised concerns that it would be yet another opportunity...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Modi government is planning to convene a meeting of all Muslim stakeholders, including the personal law board, to discuss the plight of women in matters of marriage, divorce and alimony. The move is certain to stir a controversy as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board has already alleged that the Centre is trying to impose a uniform civil code in the country. Such a code will...