-Livemint The Forest Rights Act, 2006 has been impactful but faces new threats The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, commonly known as the forest rights Act, was passed by Parliament in December 2006. It was the third milestone in the rights-based development decade of 2004-14, coming after the Right to Information Act enacted in June 2005 and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...

-The Hindu Targeting households rather than districts may be more effective, says NCAER official Would confining India's flagship rural jobs scheme to the 200 poorest districts direct the benefits to those who need it most? New data indicates that this is unlikely to be the case - little separates India's poorest districts from others, and both sets rely on the scheme. In early October, reports surfaced that the Union government was considering restricting...

-The Indian Express How many jobs must be created to realise our demographic dividend (or avoid a nightmare)? Half of India's population is below 25. The worst-case scenario is that enough jobs are not created for the millions entering the labour force each year, and that this semi-educated mass becomes a force driving social conflict. The reason that East Asian countries (especially China) rode the wave of the demographic dividend and dramatically...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Bengal appears to have emerged as one of the best performers in implementing the rural job scheme, rising to fourth on the list from being one of the laggards even two years back. According to figures with the rural development ministry, the state has generated over 11.3 crore persondays of work since April, next only to table-topper Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. Till 2012, it was among the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A government panel that evaluated Muslims' post-Sachar socio-economic conditions has suggested an anti-discrimination law, targeted mainly at employers, to combat the growing disparity between the community and the rest of the country. The committee, headed by Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Amitabh Kundu, has failed to detect any "sea change on the ground" despite several welfare plans being launched for the community after Sachar's late-2006 report. Like Sachar, the Kundu...