-Financial Express After presenting the Budget 2018, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gave a name to government’s ambitious healthcare scheme Ayushmann Bharat: Modicare. He said that nobody knew whether Obamacare was successful but Modicare will become successful in every possible way. Dubbed as “world’s largest government-funded health care programme” aims to provide health insurance coverage of Rs 5 lakh per family per annum to 10 crore poor and vulnerable families. While the programme...

-TheWire.in It will greatly bring down the poverty reduction impact of the programme, harm the construction of much-needed rural infrastructure and dramatically diminish the labourers’ bargaining power vis-à-vis the farmers. At the recent fourth governing council meeting of the NITI Aayog, the government announced the formation of a sub-group of chief ministers to propose ways of linking the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) with agricultural activities. The group is headed...

-The Telegraph State ignoring ground realities of malnutrition, busy trying to prove every victim was ailing, says Drèze Ranchi: Right to Food Campaign activists claim the Jharkhand government was doing precious little to arrest the circumstances that force people to starve and die, but was continuing to "shamelessly marshal" all resources to prove after every starvation death that it was because of illness and not hunger. According to noted economist and activist, Jean...

-FactChecker.in/ IndiaSpend Team Mumbai: On completing four years in government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released a slew of infographics based on what it offered as achievements. Two such claims relate to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), a 12-year-old rural make-work programme launched in 2006 by the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, led by the Congress party. The BJP–whose leader Prime Minister Narendra Modi once said the...

-The Telegraph Patna: A project has been launched in Bihar to make structures - primarily water bodies - under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme climate resilient. UK's Department for International Development (DFID) is providing technical assistance to the state in this project which aims to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change. Christened "Infrastructure for Climate Resilient Growth (ICRG)", the project is being implemented in 35 blocks spread over West...