-The Indian Express The Indian Express has found several cases of the pre-Matric scholarship being illegally diverted by middlemen in Bihar as well. Gaya, Saharsa: The Scholarship scam, in which money meant for poor minority students is siphoned off, is not limited to Jharkhand, but has crossed state borders. Investigating entries, district by district, on the National Scholarship Portal (NSP) and matching them with beneficiary bank accounts in the Public Finance Management System...

-The Indian Express On Sunday, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren reacted to the findings by ordering a probe and promising to revamp the verification system. Chief Secretary Sukhdev Singh said verification “has been stopped” till the probe is completed. Ranchi: On October 31, barely 48 hours after The Indian Express told him that official records had listed 180 beneficiaries from his school for the Centre’s pre-Matric scholarship for minority students, the principal...

Multidimensional poverty is about non-monetary poverty and is strongly associated with the challenges of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although previously defined only in monetary terms, poverty is now understood to include the lived reality of people’s experiences and the multiple deprivations they face. India’s multidimensional headcount ratio (H) i.e. the proportion or incidence of people (within a given population) who experience multiple deprivations has reduced from 55.1 percent to...

-The Indian Express The ingenious plan, a brainchild of state Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac, was formally rolled out earlier this week in Meenangadi, a panchayat of 33,000 people curled up in the Western Ghats hills in Wayanad district. Kochi: In a bid to encourage planting and preserving trees and thereby reduce carbon footprint, a village in Kerala has kickstarted a project that will allow farmers to mortgage the trees on their...

-The Indian Express The RJD is banking mainly on Yadav (14% of the state population) and Muslim (17%) votes, and hopes the Congress will get it upper caste and Dalit votes. New Delhi, Patna: The Mahagathbandhan or Grand Alliance constitutes primarily the RJD and Congress. The Left parties CPI (M-L), CPI and CPM, which have some support base in Bihar, are the new entrants to the alliance. Having lost partners in the...