-Outlook Batting for bringing flexibility in UPA's flagship NREGA, Union Minister Jairam Ramesh today said the scheme has failed to achieve the three objectives of wage employment, creating community assets and empowering gram panchayats at the same time in any state. Stating that all jobs cannot be provided in areas where the youths want them, he called for encouraging migration across all states and noted with concern the "discrimination" in housing suffered...

-The Hindu Is the voting population a true reflection of the country's population? New data for Delhi indicates that marginalised groups are less likely to be registered or vote, but the election commission is narrowing this gap. An Election Commission of India-commissioned survey shows that Muslims, new migrants, women and young people were less likely to be registered and vote than others. The ECI's own analysis of its data also shows that...

-PTI In what would surely come as intriguing information for policy-makers, a Labour Ministry survey has found that with an increase in education levels in the country, the unemployment rate was also increasing across age groups. One out of every three persons in the age group 15 to 29 years who have completed at least their graduation has been found to be unemployed in the report on 'Youth employment- unemployment scenario, 2012-13'...

-The Hindustan Times The current electoral discourse shows an amazing disconnect with the actual reality of the deteriorating livelihood conditions of our people. The other day, the BJP PM aspirant thundered in Bangalore that the BJP seeks to create confidence and not fear among the people. The 2002 Gujarat communal pogrom makes this sound incredulous. There is nothing in the BJP's campaign pitch that offers any solution or a methodology for...

-Newsclick.in Recent studies have shown that even as India fares better than many developing regions of the world on several indicators of growth and development such as GDP, per capita, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), literacy, life expectancy, etc., the number of malnourished children in India is significantly high. What explains this paradox? The Union Cabinet recently approved a multi-sectoral nutritional programme proposed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to reduce...