-The Indian Express Congress manifesto should have promised better implementation of MGNREGA instead of another scheme In its previous ruling stint in New Delhi, the Congress’s flagship social welfare programme was MGNREGA, which provides 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. For its next shot at power, the grand old party is promising to implement a...

-The Hindu Business Line Working from a mud house in a remote Maharashtra village, Rahibai Popere is taking farming back to its roots Pune: Twenty years ago, when her grandson fell ill, Rahibai Popere was convinced vegetables and foodgrains containing ‘poison’ had made the child unhealthy. She asked her son to stop buying vegetables and foodgrains grown using hybrid seeds, chemicals and fertilisers. And then started a journey to conserve and save indigenous...

-Livemint.com In conversation with Guy Standing, economist at the School Of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Neither the Narendra Modi government nor Rahul Gandhi have gotten minimum income scheme right, he says New Delhi: Income support is the big economic idea of the season. While the ruling BJP government announced a limited money transfer scheme targeted at farmers in the recent interim budget, the Congress has proposed to solve the country’s...

-The Telegraph There is a need to look beyond education as the means to counter the bias against girls Numbers seldom tell their own story faithfully. The civil registration system of birth and deaths in 2016 reveals that there has been a steep decline in the sex ratio at birth in the southern states, known for their high literacy rates. In 2016, Andhra Pradesh ranked with Rajasthan with 806 girls per 1,000...

-The Indian Express The latest data compiled by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) on recruitment over the last three years through the main agencies show a declining trend in selection and recruitment, from 1,13,524 cumulatively in FY2015 to 1,00,933 in FY2017. New Delhi: In terms of employment prospects, beneficiaries of the 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker sections in the general category, which was passed in Parliament last week,...