-Down to Earth Millions of Indian households transfer poverty to the next generation, making poverty eradication nearly impossible Something that has haunted me through my 22 years of reporting the rural India is how some people in certain regions always remain poor. I have visited them multiple times for various assignments, but have always found them talking about poverty. Like me, they too always wonder: “Why do we remain poor?” I have mostly reported...

-The Indian Express There is deliberate ambiguity regarding citizenship laws and policies, their implementation. These threaten to undermine the basic values of the Indian Constitution. Rattled by the widespread agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which, coupled with the National Register of Citizens, is rightly seen as the FIRst concrete step to establish a Hindu Rashtra. Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed at Ramlila Maidan that there is no move by the government...

-The Indian Express In Odisha, procurement of paddy during the ongoing 2019-20 Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) is, for the FIRst time, being done from registered farmers only after Aadhaar-based biometric authentication. FIRST IT was fertilisers, where the NDA government made disbursal of subsidy conditional upon actual sales to farmers getting registered on PoS (Point of Sale) machines in retail outlets. That reform measure — to ensure that the benefit of minimum support...

-TheWire.in This falls foul of the earlier legislative consultation policy issued by the same ministry, which states that any bill should FIRst be sent to the concerned ministry or department and their comments should be included in the cabinet note. New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Law and Justice gave its approval to the Triple Talaq Bill last year without consulting concerned ministries, departments or any state government on it, documents obtained...

-Down to Earth Latest NITI Aayog counts no state as ‘achiever’; overall performance of most ‘performing’, ‘laggard’ states towards cutting poverty dipped With every fifth Indian still below the poverty line, the country needs to take huge strides to alleviate poverty. For most states, though, it did not seem the priority, going by the poverty score card in the SDG Index 2019-20 released by the NITI Aayog just before 2019 ended. The index...