-TheWire.in Conditionalities related to utilising health services do not make any sense in the absence of a service guarantee, and only serve to blame the victims and not the system for its failures. Nearly six months after the prime minister announced maternity benefits of Rs 6,000 to pregnant and lactating mothers, the cabinet yesterday approved the implementation of the maternity benefits programme (MBP) – a scheme that will likely exclude a large...

-The Hindu Court defers petition to June 27 for omnibus hearing The Supreme Court on Friday refrained to order an interim stay on a series of government notifications requiring citizens to have Aadhaar by June 30, 2017, to equally access benefits and entitlements, even as the Centre denied imposing any such ‘deadline” to force people to get Aadhaar. The government was responding to a petition challenging 17 notifications issued by various government departments...

-Livemint.com The government’s model law for agricultural reforms aims to allow farmers a wider choice of markets beyond the local mandi New Delhi: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is working on creating a common agricultural market that will improve the lot of farmers and the efficiencies of India’s notoriously inefficient farm-produce markets. The government put out a model law proposing a fundamental reset in the way agricultural markets operate on 24 April....

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-The Telegraph Chandigarh: The chief ministers of neighbouring Punjab and Haryana have agreed to cooperate on action against sex determination centres, which are illegal, and female foeticide. Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh of the Congress today responded to a Twitter appeal from his Haryana counterpart, Manohar Lal Khattar of the BJP, and ordered the Punjab health department and police to launch a crackdown on sex determination centres operating in Punjab. "I appeal to...