-The Business Standard   PDS no prerequisite for grain entitlement to general-category families. The contours of the Food Security Bill are firming up, what with the proposed legislation now stipulating a monthly minimum of seven kilograms of grains per person for the country’s priority households. In fact, this category of families — with a pregnant woman, dependent children or a differently-abled member — will get even higher quota depending upon the availability, as...

The Centre proposes to merge the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and the yet-to-be-launched National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) in the 13th Five-Year-Plan period. The two ambitious Missions will be separate entities in the upcoming 12th Five-Year-Plan period, after the launch of the urban health mission, but subsequently merged. In its proposals to the Planning Commission, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has said that the National Urban Health Mission...

-Live Mint   The poor remain poor because they lack resources. And the formal finance sector does not want to lend them because they are too poor, costs are high and they hardly have anything to offer as collateral. That is, they are trapped in the vicious circle of poverty. This was so until the arrival of microfinance—successfully demonstrated by the Bangladesh model that the poor are “good” borrowers. It was held...

-The Business Standard   Young women in India are much better off than their mothers, but they fare much worse than their counterparts in many developing countries when it comes to the physical survival rate of women and participation in labour force, says a report by the World Bank. The World Development Report titled ‘Gender Equality and Development’ looks at gender inequality as not just a moral but also an economic issue. The report...

-The Times of India Twenty-five IAS officers from eight states are attending a two-day peer learning national workshop on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) which began in Rajkot on Tuesday. In 2009-10, Rajkot district was awarded by the central government for best implementation of the Act. On Wednesday, participants will visit four sites of MGNREGA in the district to see how it is being implemented in the district. Minister of...