-PTI New Delhi: The attachments of over 780 benami assets, worth crores, risk being invalidated because of the government's failure to create a designated adjudicating authority in the 19 months since enforcing a stringent law against black money and corruption. The Centre had amended the Benami Property Transaction Act of 1988 and enforced the tighter version on November 1, 2016, days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonetised 1,000-rupee and 500-rupee notes. Section 7...

-Civil Society News New Delhi: In 1974, Dr Samir Chaudhuri, a paediatrician working in Kolkata’s slums, founded Child in Need Institute (CINI) to tackle the many dimensions of child malnutrition. It struck him at the time that malnutrition wasn’t just a clinical problem but a complex phenomenon rooted in gender issues. Over the years, led by Dr Chaudhuri, CINI developed deep understanding of the social, economic and political underpinnings of malnutrition...

-Livemint.com In the last three years, wages of agricultural labourers have increased only by 0.5% per year while those of non-agricultural workers have declined by 0.25% per year, the worst so far in 30 years The agrarian economy continues to be plagued by falling output prices, declining incomes and increased variation in agricultural production pointing to a situation of uncertainty and vulnerability among most rural residents. This has created an unprecedented demand...

-The Indian Express The problem is under-employment. It won’t be resolved if the residually-employed are notionally shifted from the informal to formal sector. In an article in January, Soumya Kanti Ghosh and Pulak Ghosh (Ghosh and Ghosh) claimed that seven million new jobs have been created in the formal sector. Their claim is based on the increase in registration under the Employees Provident Fund (EPFO), National Pension Scheme and Employees State Insurance...

-The Hindu While consumers will be glad to see their fuel bills slashed by the advent of a favourable rate structure under the GST, State governments will have to contend with an erosion in tax revenue. At the time of writing, petrol was retailing at Rs.82.48/litre in Mumbai, roughly 62% more than the Rs.50.8/litre Pakistanis shell out for a tank of gas. This is despite the fact that crude oil prices are...