-The Indian Express The Niti Aayog's report, submitted before the United Nations, acknowledges that anti-poverty programmes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) helped weaker sections of the society. Vindicating the UPA government’s stand on pulling people out of poverty, India’s Voluntary National Review Report on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals to the United Nations has said that sustained growth of 8.3 per cent from 2004-05 to 2011-12,...

-The Financial Express A half-dozen years ago, I participated in a conference on water resource challenges in India. I remember Upmanu Lall, professor at Columbia University, graphically and bluntly making the point that Punjab’s water table was not far from collapse. This has been known for years, and there have been feeble efforts to deal with the problem, but they have been far short of what is needed. My own understanding...

-The Economic Times blog Finance minister Arun Jaitley was correct when he stated in April that constitutional constraints do not empower his government to tax agricultural income, implying that he is not constrained from amending the Income-Tax Act. B R Ambedkar, in framing the Constitution, was vehemently critical of British land revenue system, the foundation for which was laid during the Mughal period, and strengthened by the East India Company, which...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Law Commission has urged the government to amend the Criminal Procedure Code to make it easier for poor and illiterate accused to secure bail, and against "reasonable" bonds. It has stressed that the rich tend to receive bail easily in the country whereas the poor are denied bail outright or are set bail bonds that are beyond their ability to pay. It has also highlighted that over 70...

-PTI NEW DELHI: In the next two years, the government today said it will focus on nutritional security of the country's two-third poor population registered with the public distribution system (PDS) under the food law. The food law aims to provide legal entitlement of 5 kg subsidised foodgrains per person every month at Rs 1-3/kg to 23.3 crore registered members. The law was passed by Parliament in September 2013, during the previous...