-The Hindustan Times For fiscal prudence and better outcome of public expenditure, the Narendra Modi government is likely to downsize some of the social sector schemes, including the rural job guarantee programme, the biggest grosser of the central funds. Finance minister Arun Jaitley had allocated about Rs. 33,351 crore for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) in his budget this July but many believe that the huge expenditure was not...

-The Hindu Though studies point to an increase in the pace of glacier wastage in the western Himalayas, long-term monitoring is required to study glacier evolution and its relation to the climate At dawn, Mohd Soheb begins an arduous trek to the high camp at Chhota Shigri glacier in the Pir Panjal range in Spiti valley, Himachal Pradesh. From the PWD guesthouse at Chota Dara, he walks down to the Chandra river...

-GRIST Media If hard work and enterprise inevitably made you prosperous, every rural woman would be a millionaire. These women have borne the brunt of the radical, often brutal transformation of rural India these past two decades. Our writers examine the hardships they continue to face as well as their remarkable vision to solve some of the greatest problems of our times such as food security, environmental justice and developing a...

-The Business Standard World Bank-IMF study, however, says pace of reduction in absolute poverty has been substantial; report stresses skills training for youth India was home to about a third of the world's poor in 2011, according to a progress report on various social indicators from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), issued on Wednesday. In other words, the highest number of the poor lived in India in...

-The Hindu Traditional hierarchies are too deeply entrenched to be reversed through one single measure; they need a concerted push, backed by strong will from different segments of society, including, but not confined to, politicians The rise of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Dalit-Adivasi leaders in the political sphere is celebrated as India's "silent revolution." At the national level, this phenomenon has been especially marked since the early 1990s, leading to comments...