-The Hindu  The directive comes even as many complaints and loopholes pointed out earlier by users of the pilot app-based project have not been plugged yet Digitally capturing the attendance of workers employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGREGS) has been made universal by the Centre from January 1, 2023.  The Union government, arguing for transparency and accountability in May 2021, had started a pilot project to capture attendance...

-The Hindu The Centre’s taking up the burden for free food grain distribution in 2023 will provide relief to States The Government has decided not to extend the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, (PMGKY), a scheme that ran between April 2020 to December 2022 (except for a short period in between), and provided additional allocation of food grains, i.e., rice or wheat from the central pool at five kilograms a month...

-Newsclick.in There is no evidence either of the subvariant being particularly more transmissible than other variants of the Omicron lineage, according to the eminent immunologist. BF.7, the new Omicron subvariant which has triggered a surge in China, has also been detected in India. Till the filing of this article, India hadrecorded only four BF.7 cases. New precautionary measures taken by the government, including advisories on wearing masks in public places and avoiding...

- Deccan Herald Covid-19 reverse migration of labour added to joblessness A rise in self-employment and unpaid family labour three years into the Covid-19 pandemic even as wage rates fell is an indication that rural distress has risen, the economist Santosh Mehrotra writes. Economic distress was on an upward trajectory even before the Pandemic and the sudden arrival of millions of reverse migrants in 2020 added to the stock of unemployed people...

-Newsclick.in The sharp and apparently intriguing fall in industrial production in October, and feeble post-Covid recovery, points to a deep-rooted malaise in the Indian economy. There has been much discussion in public about the index of industrial production (IIP) for October 2022 being 4% lower than the index for October 2021; and quite rightly so, since no obvious explanations like a Covid-induced lockdown or even its residual lingering effects can be adduced...